The Journals of Harry Potter, Book 2: The Cordovan Leather Notebook
by Rosa Mundi
Summary: Harry's on the train, the Philosopher's Stone is at Hogwarts. How will Quirrelmort handle this Harry and friends? Harry starts his new journal.
1. Thirty-one August 1991

**31 August 1991 Saturday again**

Now I am starting writing in my new cordovan leather journal. I think I will get it stamped with my bind rune later. The person who has entered our compartment is our first muggleborn, a lovely young lady who just said "Hmph!" at me even though I was quite serious. I told her that I was noting down who I meet as I meet them and that she could feel free to watch so she'd know I wasn't writing anything bad. And the reason I'm taking notes is that I am hoping to meet a lot of people an the train and make friends, but I don't expect I'll actually remember much without notes. So:

Hermione Jean Granger, born 19 September 1979, so we must be polite because she's an older woman, sorry Hermione, I was just trying to be friendly. I'm still learning this "making friends" thing. _Well, that's OK, then. Friends?_ Of course! And once the train gets going we'll introduce you to the others.

Anyway, Hermione's parents are dentists with a practice in London. She's read all about me, but that's all old news, and it was all stuff my mother did anyway? _They wouldn't put it in a book if it wasn't true!_ What, you've never read an outdated science or history book? They mean it to be true, but that doesn't mean they're always right. Besides, I was there and they weren't. Heck, I am the only living witness to whatever happened, so any conclusions are just artist's reproductions really.

This is kind of fun writing back and forth. I should give Neville a pen too, then it would get really chaotic. Hermione, did you know most pureblood wizards have never seen Biros? They're kind of like the American Amish, although I kid you not, I know a guy who will be in next year's class who likes Chuck Berry. Who's your favorite band? _I really like The Waterboys, Enigma and U2, I wish I could bring CDs with me to Hogwarts._ Well, if you can get them on vinyl, wizards do have things that act like record players. We had a music party at Neville's house last month. _That's wonderful, I'll have to see if I can get Mum to pick me up a few and send them. _

Oops, someone else at the door, oh, hi Ron, sure you can sit with us. Sorry I didn't get more time to talk yesterday. Introduced Ron to Hermione, he already knows Neville. Ron's Dad works for the Ministry, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department. Oh sure, here it is, compliments of the Dark Lugnut himself. Why do I call him that? Well, a lot of people are uncomfortable with people saying "Voldemort," especially any of his repentant ex-followers, cos he used to Crucio people who weren't respectful enough to him. Really, he was a nutter, it's a wonder _anyone_ followed him. Here he was trying to make the world safe for purebloodcracy (cool, I got a snicker from Hermione!) and purebloods were the main ones to get killed. There are whole lineages gone now and it's all his fault. Most of the lines that got ended were his followers. But most people call him "You Know Who" which is just too cute.

Yes, Ron, there are repentant Deatheaters. I know because they're all sworn to me. Sworn to me? Well, erm, I'm kind of an Earl. The Most Honorable, the Earl of Black, presented to the Queen and everything. Oh, cut that out. You all have permission to call me Harry.

So anyway, I'm going to close this for a bit, cos I have to take Hermione to meet Padma Patil. She's really smart and reads a lot too, I think you guys might get along. She has a sister who's a real girly-girl, and they're identical, so it's a little unnerving at times, but at least they don't complete each other's sentences like I've heard Ron's older brothers do. I haven't actually met the twins yet. His other older brother, Percy, is the Griffindor prefect, and he reads a lot and likes things to be orderly and make sense too. Oh, he is not, he just finds the whole family all together to be a bit overwhelming. There are seven Weasley kids, all redheads and all pretty boisterous except Percy and Ginny.

Anyway, come on Hermione, I have people you have to meet.

So now I've got Hermione sitting with Padma and Morag and some Ravenclaw girls from second year, and they're discussing The Hobbit, so I think I've left her in good hands. Draco just introduced me and Theodore Nott, who prefers to be called Theo. He's tall already, his birthday is October 31, and he's an introvert, so I told him that I am happy to meet him and would like to be friends, but I'll let him decide when to talk, cos I know I get a bit excited at times. Theo draws, and he's quite good. We're going to sit down and look at my pens and nibs later when we're someplace quieter, i.e. not on the train.

Greg and Chip are busy playing exploding snap, although they did say hi. Blaize and Millie are trying to see who can be the snarkiest and I think they're both winning. It's really funny.

Percy's off at a prefects' meeting, but I ran into Cedric, and he introduced me to his girlfriend, Cho Chang, who is the Ravenclaw Seeker. I kind of babbled something about him and Percy and he laughed and said no, they'd thought about dating last year and decided it would mess up their friendship too much. Really? Just like that, and you're not insulted that I thought that? And Cedric laughed at me again and asked why would he be? Well, muggles don't approve of men dating men. Well, muggles are silly. Heirs have to produce more heirs, to keep lines of succession going, but beyond that, who a person dates is their business. Does everyone think that? Well, more or less. People would mind more based on politics than gender, though. His parents would have been fine with Percy, are fine with Cho, but would kill him if he dated, say, Pansy Parkinson. Huh. So if I wanted to date Draco? So long as both of us end up getting married and producing heirs, we're fine. But last scions of Noble and Most Ancient Houses aren't allowed to marry men. That's only for younger sons. Alphard Black and Tiberius Nott, for instance, were together right up until he died.

So that was interesting. Every time I think I have wizard society almost figured out, I find something I've totally missed.

**31 August Late**

And now the sorting's done and I'm tucked in my bed and writing a bit more before trying to sleep. The train ride was lots of fun, but I gave up on trying to write. It got to feeling a bit awkward, so I took my journal back to the compartment and stuck it in my book bag. When I got there, Neville and Ron and Ernie and a couple of guys named Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan were talking about Quidditch vs. football. I said they're both great, and I brought a football with me in hopes of getting up a few pickup games. That made me two new friends right there. Dean's from Brighton, Seamus is Irish but lives in Manchester. We hung out for the rest of the ride and bought treats from the cart lady, a bit of everything so we could figure out which things we like the best, and taught Dean and Seamus to play exploding snap. I never did see Susan and Hannah on the train, although we caught up with them at the sorting later.

The boat ride to the castle was incredible. It was just getting dark, and the dying sunset light behind the castle and reflected in the lake was beautiful. All six of us couldn't go in one boat, so I stayed with Ernie and we joined up with Blaize and Millie.

Hannah and Susan went to Hufflepuff. Millie and Chip went to Slytherin. Seamus went to Griffindor. Greg went to Slytherin. Hermione went to Ravenclaw. Daphne went to Slytherin. Neville went to Griffindor, surprising no one but him. Morag went to Ravenclaw. Ernie went to Hufflepuff. Draco went to Slytherin, what a surprise, and so did Theo and Pansy. Padma went to Ravenclaw, Parvati to Griffindor. The girl right in front of me was even smaller than me and named Sally-Ann Perks. She went to Hufflepuff.

Then it was my turn. The whole hall started talking when my name got called, of course. So I walked in front of all those people and put an ancient hat on my head. I'm fine with anywhere, I told him, they all have their good points and bad points. The hat said that I would fit in well in any of the houses, but I would achieve the most and do the most good in... SLYTHERIN!

So I went and sat with Draco and Greg and Chip and Pansy and nodded at Theo as I walked by, and we watched the rest. Dean and Ron went to Griffindor, Blaize went to Slytherin, and then it was time to eat.

The food! Words fail. There was chicken. There was beef. There were things I had never seen before. There was a dish of something Asian and vegetarian that I had to try. There were potatoes cooked a dozen different ways, and all sorts of vegetables. I tried everything with mushrooms in it, and stuck to one treacle tart for pud as I was stuffed. Then there were more announcements - no going in the Forbidden Forest (the jokes write themselves), stay away from the third floor unless you want to die, try not to annoy Mr. Filch too much - and then we were dismissed to our various common rooms and I am _tired_, so I will write about my impressions of that tomorrow, and hopefully by then Tango will be speaking to me again.


	2. One September 1991

**1 September 1991 Sunday**

One plus about Slytherin, I already know all my dorm mates, even if I only just met Theo on the train. And I've met all the girls except Tracey briefly. And I found out that I've been misspelling Blaise's name. Oops. I apologized, and he said to think nothing of it.

Today is Sunday and a day off, thank goodness. The prefects took all of us first years about and showed us where all the classrooms are, and they told us that we're not expected to learn our way about immediately, but please to have finished our getting lost by Yule Hols. We all got our schedules with breakfast, so they could even show us the best ways to get from one classroom to the other.

I'm the youngest in our house, and the highest-ranking. The number of my housemates whose families are sworn to me rather makes my stomach hurt, but it sounds like the ones who are sworn to Lestrange are where I'm going to have problems. Cedric hasn't inherited yet, and probably won't for years, and Lord Lestrange does not number among my fans.

Anyway, I met with all the members of families who are sworn to me in one of the house meeting rooms after lunch. I might have said something along the lines of, "Cripes, I'm supposed to protect all you lot?" and one of the older ones told me not to be an idiot, it was _their_ job to protect _me_ at this point. Until I showed up, the house hadn't been drawn into precise Black/Lestrange/Selwyn lines, so alliances are going to be rather fluid right now, and there is no head of what will become the Lestrange faction. Also, since at the moment some of my people have alliances with some of them, it is possible they could find out what Lord Lestrange's orders are going to be. I said that would be handy if someone could get them.

Then we talked about orders and expectations and stuff. I've made up my mind to trust Mr. Malfoy, or at least to look like I trust him in public, cos if I don't, I'll destroy any effectiveness he might have, so I told them that, as Lucius Malfoy is my regent, and is currently at the center of information gathering, he is going to have a lot of information that none of the rest of us do, so I want any orders he gives followed, without any second-guessing. He sends me regular reports, but it takes time to write reports and it takes time to read reports - and it takes wisdom and experience to understand reports, something that I am woefully lacking at this point in my life. I have Grandfather's journals, and I am learning from them, but it takes time, and I am open to learning from my housemates as well.

Not everyone in the group looked exactly happy to be sworn to me and to have to trust their continued safe existence to an untried boy, that was obvious. But they can't just knock me out and hand me over to the Dark Lasagna, even if he were here and they wanted to, and there were enough of them who think that having the Boy Who Lived and the Earl of Black rolled together into one person and that person in Slytherin was a huge piece of unforeseen luck ... Argh. My sentence is running away from me. The Boy Who Lived is an icon for the Light. Lord Black commands the respect of the Grey and the Dark. I... I, me, Harold Potter, the human being inside those icons, I am Grey. Perfect light is sterile. Perfect dark is suffocating. Mercy must be tempered with justice and justice with mercy. And that's what I told them. I am Grey, and now so are we all.

So that was that and in the end they were all at least grudgingly accepting, and some of them were outright friendly. (I think I am going to like Adrian Pucey.)

And I did get to have some fun today too. I ate breakfast with Millie and we caught up with each other a bit, and I caught up with Neville and Dean and Seamus and Ron after breakfast. Ron was a little stroppy about my sorting, but we all talked, and I convinced Dean and Seamus that I was still interested in pickup football and some of the other halfbloods and muggleborns heard as well, so we all ended up getting together for a couple of games of interhouse football after dinner. I only had the one ball, but a couple of upper years transfigured others, plus goals, and we all had a grand time and decided we need to do this every night until it gets too dark too early. Only a few people can play Quiddich, but everyone can play football. Ron and Neville came and played too, and I think Ron could actually be pretty good, and Neville wasn't half bad as a goalie. Millie is brilliant, and I am not at all surprised. Well, OK, maybe a little, since I didn't know they played football in Hogsmeade.

This evening Theo and I hung out and he tried out my pen and nibs and said he absolutely had to get a set of his own, so I said I'd ask Remus to pick some up, and he could pay me back out of his pocket money whenever he got around to it. We also talked about the fact that his dad is a loyal Deatheater and Theo says my hypothesis about the Dark Lizard having actually been trying to destroy purebloods made a surprising amount of sense, and said he really had to think about that, but that he might have some useful information for me.

And I was going to write some more about the sorting and the professors and the great hall, but it's been a long day and I'm tired and Tango says he might think about forgiving me if I give him a really good brushing.

[AN: Sorry it's a short chapter. Longer tomorrow, I hope.]


	3. Two September, 1991

**2 September 1991 Monday**

Classes! I was worried that I wouldn't see my friends in other houses, but we have Herbology and study hall with the Ravenclaws, Charms with the Hufflepuffs, and then double Transfiguration with Griffindor after lunch. Today, anyway. Wednesday is double History of Magic and Friday is double potions, also with Griffindor, which is great, cos I was really missing Neville, Susan and Hannah. I'm partnered with Hermione in Herbology. She doesn't seem to have spent much time gardening, but at least she's not afraid to get her hands dirty. Draco was being prissy about it, but I told him that anything we're learning in first year is something all wizards with a Hogwarts education will know, so he doesn't want to miss it and look bad. Besides, he can always write to his parents and tell them he forgot he would need a nice pair of gardening gloves.

On the way out of class, Hermione hugged me and thanked me for introducing her to Padma and Morag and Mandy and Lisa and Su, and Lisa is a Muggleborn like her, so they've read most of the same books, and there's a huge bookshelf on one wall of their dorm room where they can pool all their books, and the prefects came by with magical bookplates so we could mark them all. I said that sounds like a lot of fun and she said it is, on the train and the first night, all they talked about were which books they had all read and which they hadn't, and now all three purebloods (Padma and Morag and Su) are reading _The Hobbit_, and she and Lisa are reading _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_, which is a little kid book, but everyone else has read it, so they had to catch up. Girls! Who _read_! And don't care much about clothes! And she'd thought she wanted to go into Griffindor... Padma caught that bit and laughed and said that Parvati and her best friend Lavender are a pair of complete airheads whose idea of heavy reading is _Teen Witch Weekly_, and Hermione had a lucky escape there, and all the Ravenclaw girls teased us that now Hermione owes me a life debt. I asked why, and they said that by the end of the week either Hermione would have killed Lav and Parv and be on her way to Azkaban, or _they_ would have killed _her_. Morag said that Fay isn't too bad but Lydia is a total Quiddich jock, and either way, Hermione's well out of it.

And apparently the Ravenclaw common room is also a library, mainly made up of books graduating Ravens have donated to the school, but they've also got some very nice donations from Raven alumni as well, and while there is almost nothing muggle in the Hogwarts library, the Ravenclaw library has one whole section for muggle sciences, and they even check to make sure the books are current, and they have a room set aside for outdated books, with annotations in them as to why they're outdated. They told me that the older students told them that there are some of the older books that have been in and out of the outdated books room a bunch of times, and that the margin notes in them are fascinating.

Since I was talking to them anyway, I made sure that all the Snake Girls and all the Raven girls had been introduced, and while Pansy is inclined to look down her nose at Hermione, she and Morag have known each other forever, and Morag likes Hermione, so Pansy has to be nice or Morag will get mad at her.

None of us bothered studying during our free period, even though a couple of the Raven girls looked a bit twitchy at the idea, but it's the first day, and it's sunny with a nice light breeze, and we've all read ahead already _anyway_, so we just hung out getting to know each other. The other guys took the piss later, but it was fun hanging out in a huge bunch of girls. I'd never done it before. One of them thought to call a house elf, so we all had lemonade and biscuits while we talked. We got to talking about books again, and Hermione had actually heard of the All-of-a-Kind Family, and she said that she's been to New York and most of it isn't much like that anymore, which is too bad. I told them about Hufflepuff's Milk and Biscuits Nights, so now they're talking about starting one up in Ravenclaw as well. The other Slytherins didn't want to go that far, but we did think maybe asking Professor Snape for a bookshelf and asking Professor Flitwick about those bookplates might be worth trying. Then we had to run off to Charms and they had to run off to DADA.

Charms is going to be pure magical theory until after Halloween. It was really interesting and I took a lot of notes, but the best part was getting to sit with Susan and Hannah. They just had Herbology with the Griffindors, and said Neville says hi.

After that was lunch, and we were starving! Lunch was lots of kinds of bread, and spreads and meat and cheese and veg, so you could make pretty much any kind of sandwich you could think of. I made a lot of half sandwiches so I could try a lot of things and it turns out Chip hates evil beetroot just as much as I do. [AN: Vincent Crabbe, AKA Chip because his family has four living Vincent Crabbes], and all of us thought curried chicken on challah made a brilliant sandwich. I'd never had challah before. Prefect Jones said it's a traditional Jewish festival bread. We've only got two or three Jewish students right now, but we had lots during the Grindelwald War, so the house elves got good at making it and every table has a huge loaf of it every Friday night dinner, still warm from the oven (so you never want to be late for Friday dinner). She cast a warming charm on a couple of pieces for all us firsties, so we'd have an idea what we had to look forward to and we all agreed that punctuality was a very important virtue indeed, and we all would be working hard on practicing it. She also said the elves were great at remembering holidays and they never met a holiday they didn't like, so we always got festival food, like special late dinners during Ramadan (she had to explain that) and Moon Cakes for the Lunar New Year (ditto), and someone even told them about something called Discordianism, so there are always frankfurters with rolls on Fridays as well. The only holiday that's not so good is Yom Kippur, because Jewish tradition is that those who are allowed to eat are only supposed to eat healthy food to assuage hunger, but the Break the Fast meal an hour after sundown is great.

Draco and Pansy protested that those are muggle holidays, and Prefect Jones snorted and said that except for Discordianism, all of these holidays are much older than the statute of secrecy and are just as important for wizards as they are for muggles in the places they come from. The rest of us said, seriously? You want to turn down holiday food? And they allowed as how maybe they hadn't thought it through properly.

Then we went to Transfiguration, and there was a cat sitting on the lectern that looked just like one I've seen hanging out with Mrs. Figg's cats. Draco and Neville though it had to be just one that looked a bit like it, but I pointed out the spectacle marks and said that I've never seen marks like that on any other cat. We're way too far from Surrey for her to just have been lost, but I couldn't think for the life of me how the heck she got here.

And it was class time and we were wondering where PMM was, and the cat jumped down off the lectern and turned into her in midair! Wicked!

The task for class was to turn a matchstick into a needle. Just saying the word and tapping the needle didn't do much, so I wondered if it might be something like preparing potions ingredients, so I slowed my breathing down and tried to think of nothing but needles and tried again. It takes quite a bit of focus, and every time I got mad and thought "Stupid matchstick!" It would turn all the way back. I got it by the end of class, though. Theo and I were the only ones who did, so we tried to help other people do it. It was interesting. We told everyone, it's kind of like preparing potions ingredients, and you could really tell who'd had training in brewing and who hadn't. We ended up explaining meditation and focus to Millie and Chip and Ron and Dean and Seamus, and they all managed to get their needles to change color a bit, and Theo and I got five points each for Slytherin.

After that, we have a three hour chunk every day for extracurriculars with all the rest of the first year. Theo and I both signed up for Magical and Muggle Art (two different groups) and I joined the Astrology group and I joined a bunch of muggleborns in a scouting group led by none other than Professor Dumbledore, who looks _interesting_ in a scout uniform. We sat and talked about which merit badges we wanted to work on, and found out that there are a couple of magical merit badges as well as all the usual ones. When I heard that, I excused myself, and went and dragged Draco off from where he was trying to convince Professor Edevane that she ought to run an Estate Management group for first years and had him come join us. PD looked a little surprised to see him, but very pleased. Draco and I said we wanted to work on the Potioneering merit badge and we all decided that since we were taking Herbology anyway, we'd also work on the one for magical plants. The scouting group took up the entire three-hour slot, and when we were done, we were all signed up for the newest Hogwarts Scouting Patrol. Professor Dumbledore said that we would be doing some of our activities together with the second and third year patrols, but mostly each patrol would be independent.

Hogwarts First Year Scouting Patrol: Terry Boot, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Seamus Finnegan, Draco Malfoy, Lydia Moon, me, Dean Thomas. Lydia's a pureblood too, but she says she saw the pamphlet about scouting and it sounded brilliant, so she had to try it. The Moons aren't anywhere near Draco's social equals, but her being there seemed to make him feel better anyway. (And that left Chip and Greg free to join the Frog Choir with no problems, cos I can watch out for Draco just as well as they can.). Terry's Ravenclaw, Justin's Hufflepuff, Dean, Seamus, and Lydia are Griffindors, and Draco and I are Slytherins, so we've got a good cross-section. Also, Justin is as upper-class as Draco is, just out in the non-magical world. I think I'll be able to get the two of them talking about high society before too long.

Oh, and that was the brilliant thing I forgot to mention from the opening feast: Mr. Tate, our dance mater is now Professor Tate, and all of us first years have Dance after lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Apparently Lady Longbottom talked PD into it, and it was the first thing the school board had agreed unanimously on in decades. The other years are having Dance added to their Extracurriculars Block.

Dinner was pasta, different shapes and different sauces and lots of meats and vegetable and garlic bread. I was too stuffed for pudding, and I had to watch and cheer at the evening football games instead of playing. Draco sat with me and watched, and Greg and Chip went out and played. It was almost as much fun watching as playing, and Greg and Chip got put on different teams, so they were actually competing against each other. They agree with me now that football is brilliant, and Draco said it wasn't bad. And Ron and Greg were on the same team, and worked together to get a really wicked goal past Neville and high-fived each other when it went in and was declared good.

Tango was lying curled up next to the fire with Millie's cat when we came in. We both wished we had a camera, but Theo did a quick sketch and said he'd try painting them later. They did make a great picture. Tango's ginger and huge and Millie's cat, Stradivarius, is little and round and black.

And now I've finished my short essay for Charms, and I didn't have homework for Herbology or Transfiguration, so now I am going to sleep.


	4. Three September, 1991

**3 September 1991 Tuesday**

I woke up early this morning or, early compared to the others anyway, and I realized I missed Luna, and I kind of wanted to know how Shack was doing, and I haven't seen Percy in forever, so I sat and wrote a long letter to Luna and a medium letter to Shack and notes to Percy and Ced and took the up to the owlry. I ran into Percy on the way, which surprised me. Seems a couple of years ago there had been a DADA professor who also offered a fitness extracurricular (Professor Tate is doing that too, but I think I'm full up right now) and he found he really liked running, so now he gets up and runs a couple of miles (miles? Yeah, wizards never went metric) almost every morning. It's nice and quiet and he can use up nervous energy and clear his head. I said I hadn't realized I'd be running into him but here, I could save Hedwig a trip, and handed him his note. He read it quickly and said really? Really what? You really miss hanging around me? And I said of course, you're really smart and you tell good stories and you're funny in a quiet way that I realize and laugh about an hour later when I go over the conversation in my head, and you don't talk to me like a dumb kid even though you're so much older and know so much. Percy said I shouldn't sell myself short, I'm surprisingly well-informed for my age, and then I probably blushed and I asked him if I could sit with him during the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff game, if I wouldn't be in the way or anything, because he was really good at explaining the game. He asked me if I wouldn't rather sit with my friends, and I said that he is one of my friends, and so is Neville, and I'm becoming friends with the other three Griffindor boys because of football. Which you started, he said. Only kinda, I said. All I did was tell Dean and Seamus that I had brought a football and then some other people heard and now we all get together to play football in the evening. He smiled and shook his head and ruffled my hair and said unless, and this was very unlikely, he had a new girlfriend by the time that game rolled around, I was welcome to sit by him.

Hmm. Girlfriend. Right. Percy's nearly grown up. The idea of being naked with a girl his age probably isn't something he finds disgusting, and I do have sense enough not to ask him that. I did ask him if there was anyone in particular he fancied, though, and I know Prefect Jones is single. I could check the family trees to see who's the right families. He said no, no, really, please, that's quite all right, he'd handle that on his own, but I don't know. Percy's kind of shy and he admits himself that he isn't good at making friends. I'm not supposed to think about who I'm going to marry, I promised Remus, but Percy's old enough to start thinking about that. I bet I could find some possible girls for him. Of course, Susan and Hannah might kill me, but I think Percy might not feel like waiting until they get old enough. Cedric obviously doesn't need my help, but ... This is going to be fun! But I'm not going to tell anyone I'm doing it. This will be my secret project. I figure, I've got two years, no three, Fifth Year, Sixth Year, Seventh Year, and it's not going to get really important until seventh year.

So anyway, he went for his run and I gave the notes to various owls and went and hung out in the great hall waiting for it to be breakfast time and looking over family trees. And breakfast was breakfast, and we went to DADA. I do not like Professor Quirrel. He stutters and stammers and reeks of garlic and wrongness and something about him gives me blinding headaches. DADA is an arena class that the whole first year takes together, so I sat with Neville and Hannah and Susan and Millie and Theo sat kind of near us but back a few rows, and by the end of class all of them were insisting I go see Madame Pomfrey, and all we have after DADA is library time until lunch, so everyone walked me down, even Theo (so while we were walking I introduced him to everyone, and I presented everyone to him even though Neville outranks him, which both he and Neville knew, and also you're supposed to present boys to girls, not the other way around, but everyone was nice about it, and they also told me that I shouldn't be talking with a headache like that).

The weird thing was, the headache went away, just like that, as soon as I got out of the DADA room. I figured it was worth seeing Madame Pomfrey anyway, though. She checked me over and while she couldn't find anything headache causing, she did find a few minor things wrong that we could deal with now and put me on a potions regimen to be taken with meals. Theo decided to stay and get looked at too, but Madame Pomfrey shooed the others out.

Theo asked if I could wait for him, so I did. He's got a sprained wrist and some bruises and I didn't watch his checkup, but I could tell where she had put the bruise balm, and I asked him when it happened. He said just before he left for the train. I said oh and we dropped it, but someone in his house grabbed him by the wrist and threw him into a wall, and he'd been drawing with that hand. That happened to me a couple of times before I learned to duck or when to shut up, I know what it looks like, and I can't think of anything else that could have caused that. I did ask if it hadn't hurt to draw and he said yeah, but he was pretty clumsy, so he did this a lot and he was used to it.

Now I have to decide what I'm going to do. I wonder if AP and UV would let me invite him home for part of Christmas hols?

We got to the library and we had notes from Madame Pomfrey, so Madame Pince let us in without any trouble and Theo and I sat down with Blaise and Tracey and Daphne, who are our official study group, and apologized for being late. They said it was all right since we didn't have that much to study right now, so we all got out our potions books and previewed a bit. I told them when PSS took me book shopping that he told me I should read the first three chapters, so we all quizzed each other on that. They thought the highlighting I had done was really neat, and I told them that PSS told me to buy the highlighters, too, that they're a muggle invention that hasn't caught on here yet, so now I am going to owl Remus and ask me if he can pick me up a dozen or so sets (cos I bet the Ravens and Percy would like them too).

Lunch was sandwiches again, but with all the things they have for making sandwiches, I don't think it would be possible to get bored with it.

After lunch was dance class, with our entire year. It was fun. All of us who had been at the party paired with someone who hadn't, except for Pansy and Draco. I danced with Hermione, who I think might have two left feet. She's smart, though, so I'm sure she'll get it. Hannah and Theo looked nice together, and so did Susan and Ron (who had been at the party, but hadn't actually danced that much). Neville danced with Su Li, who is even shorter than he is.

After that was another extracurricular block. Magical Art and Muggle Art were an hour each, and then I went to Astrology, which was all sorts of fun. Professor Vector runs it, and the only ones signed up for it were, me, Padma, Su, and Ernie. We spent the session on moon signs, cos there's a spell you can cast on someone to find out exactly when and where they were born, so we all worked out each other's and then we discussed what we could surmise from moon signs alone. Thursday we are going to work on rising signs and discuss the pros and cons of different ways of measuring the various houses. (As beginners we are going to be working with the equal houses system, but she wants us to know a little about the others anyway.) [AN: This is definitely information Harry would include, but I am not in the mood to do the math right now, so it's going to have to wait.]

After that was dinner. Roast beef and mash and glazed carrots and garlic broccoli and apple tart. I was running a little late because we had gotten caught up in talking, so I walked past the Griffindor table when it was full and I got to see what a stressed-out Percy looks like and it made me want to go over there and knock every single Griffindor lower year's heads together. Instead I walked over and asked Percy if it was always like this, and he said no, so far this a pretty quiet and uneventful meal. So I hugged him.

Everyone stopped talking and stared at me, so I stared right back at them and said What? Ron asked what'd I go and hug Percy for, as if Percy was a bug or something, and I said it was because he was clearly stressed out and had a headache building and he looked like he could use one and I I was in charge of you rowdy lot I'd've killed half of you by now, so they really should appreciate how kind and patient Percy was. Ron snorted, and I kind of lost my temper and pushed his face into his mashed potatoes.

Then I got scolded rather severely by PMM and PSS and I got detention from both of them and PSS said he would speak to me in greater depth later and I had to apologize to Ron, and by then I really was sorry. And Ron said that it was OK and pretty funny actually, and he was glad there was someone who likes his prat of an older brother, and PSS grabbed my shoulder very firmly before I could even move, and Ron lost five points for being rude. And I apologized to Percy too, for making a fuss and making things worse, and he smiled at me and said it was OK and that no one had ever shoved one of his brothers' faces into mashed potatoes for him before, and it was a memory he would treasure forever. PMM glared at him, but didn't take points.

PSS marched me over to the Slytherin tale and told me to sit down, eat my dinner, cause no more trouble, and be in his office at 19:00 sharp. I said, but it's 18:30 now, and he said that it would behoove me then to eat quickly.

As soon as he left, everyone told me that I should not have argued, and he must like me (although Draco suggested it's just that he's fond of roast beef) or he'd have marched me off to his office right now. So I ate quickly and made it to his office with a minute to spare.

Ouch. "Behavior I would expect from a Griffindor." I tried not to argue, but I finally said that they were picking on Percy and they shouldn't do that, it wasn't fair. Professor Snape pointed out that Percy is the Griffindor prefect and these were people under his authority, so he ought not to need protecting from them and had I considered that by jumping in like that, I made Percy look weak and implied that he couldn't handle his responsibilities? And no, that idea had never crossed my mind, and I never meant to undermine Percy's authority like that. PSS said that I really need to work on curbing these Griffindorish impulses of mine, and that I would have detention with him after dinner tomorrow night, scrubbing cauldrons, without magic. I nodded and left when I was excused and got undressed and went to bed. Even after writing all this it's still not curfew yet and nobody's come up to the dorm, but I am going to sleep anyway.


	5. Four and Five September, 1991

**4 September 1991 Wednesday **

I did not manage to fall asleep before everyone came to bed, and I did not manage to convince them that I had fallen asleep either. Group opinion was about evenly divided between "That was brilliant!" and "What were you thinking?" I agree with Theo and Blaise that it was obvious I _wasn't_ thinking, and I really need to work on that. Theo says we've already got Draco for the Slythindor slot, I'm supposed to be the Slytherpuff, but then Blaise pointed out that I was displaying loyalty, if not good sense, so everyone agreed that I'm still the Slytherpuff. Gee, thanks guys. So who's the Slytherclaw, I asked. Blaise said Theo, Theo said Blaise, and Draco and Chip said Greg, and then Greg excused himself and said he forgot to shower. That was interesting.

Anyway, I am writing this in the morning, and I realized with all the excitement about getting my first detention, I forgot about Theo. I can't believe I did that, but on the other hand, getting scolded by PSS _is_ a bit distracting. Also, it hit me how strange it is that I am considering inviting someone else home to escape their family. Harry, meet irony, irony, Harry. I believe you two are already acquainted?

Anyway, I want to try to catch Professor Snape on the way to breakfast, so I'll set this aside until tonight.

**Breakfast time**

I'm skipping breakfast because I really want to think. I talked to Professor Snape and I told him about Theo. he asked how I knew and I said that we were in the infirmary at the same time and I could see where his bruises were, and please don't ask how I know, but I know what those bruises mean. And then he looked at me and he nodded and said that my concern for a housemate did me credit, and now he wanted me to listen to him very carefully. What is right in this situation is obvious. What can be done and how to do it is not. Theo is the Nott heir. The two choices he has on the face of it are to survive until he reaches his majority or to give up his inheritance and his place in his family. If anyone does anything hasty, and he looked me right in the eyes when he said that, it could lead to those being the only two options. Finding others, and possible paths to them, will take thought and patience and finesse.

So what he wants me to do is be Theo's friend, but not do anything to indicate that I know anything, to anyone, except maybe to Theo, and then only if he brings it up first.

And he's right. I've read enough to know that interfering between a lord and his family is just about impossible without clear evidence of depravity, and sometimes even then. Some of the old families use Crucio as discipline. A little thing like a sprained wrist won't even register.

And Theo's not even one of my people, he's a Lestrange. If Cedric were Lord Lestrange, he could act, but the current one won't. In the short term, all we can do is try to get Theo to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas hols and hope his father will let him. What this needs is a cunning plan, and I'm not that good yet. And Theo would probably never forgive me if I told Mr. Malfoy about it, so I will have to leave it to PSS and hope he can think of something.

Tango has an excellent purr. I wish I could protect everyone who needs protecting.

**Evening**

Millie and Theo came back to look for me and Millie brought me some toast with marmalade and we went to class. This time we had homework, so we all sat down outside and got it done by the end of free period. Then went to charms and then we went to lunch, which was sandwiches again, but also mail. I got a letter from Luna! She says she misses us all and Ottery St. Catchpole is a lot duller after all the fun we had this summer. She sent me a really nice watercolor of a moon frog. I also got reports from Mr. Malfoy and a nice long letter from Mrs. Figg. All the cats are settling into the new house nicely, and Lucius kindly set up an anti-cat barrier between her wing and where the Dursleys live that also keeps out hair and dander and helped her acquire a house elf, named Daisy. She said that AP and UD and Mr. Malfoy are still discussing whether they want house elves or human servants, but she thinks they're going to end up with a squib butler and housekeeper, plus one house elf, as a compromise. She says Mr. Malfoy is being a bit pushy on the house elf because he has one who is a huge Harry Potter fan, and she thinks he's getting a bit tired of hearing about the "great Harry Potter".

After lunch was History of Magic. I think I want to switch one of my extracurriculars to Ghoul Studies and learn to perform exorcisms. Was he that boring back when he was alive? Can't the school afford to pay an actual teacher? They could just let him haunt an empty classroom and move the class somewhere else. Please. Or just hand us all books and let us do independent study, which is what I found out all the Ravenclaws and Slytherins do anyway. The classes form up a rota, and only a third of the class actually attends at any one time. All of his lectures have been exactly the same for over a hundred years, so there are multiple bound copies of history notes in the common rooms, with extras on what you need to know for OWLs and NEWTs. I'm on for next week, cos I figured I might as all get it over with, and at least now I know to bring a good book.

For extracurriculars block, PD took us on a mushroom identifying expedition along the edge of the Forbidden Forest. They varied from "Don't eat that" to "Don't even think about touching that," which was kind of depressing. We made lots of sketches and took notes on how to identify them all and what they're useful for. At least one of the "Don't even think about touching that" sorts explodes if you mess with it at the wrong phase of the moon, and one of them if you touch it at the wrong part of its growth cycle explodes and covers you with spores that start growing into more mushrooms right on your skin. They make you sleepy too, so they're pretty dangerous, but Madame Pomfrey knows how to remove them reasonably safely ("reasonably" in this case meaning that they only have to remove and regrow the entire outer layer of your skin). We noticed that the clump of those mushrooms we were looking at was rather rabbit-shaped and decided that we definitely weren't messing with the Forbidden Forest without an expert guide. And then there was one that eating it causes pleasant hallucinations, followed by less pleasant convulsions, and death.

But we've got some excellent notes and sketches for the Mushroom section of our nature journals. Friday we're going bird watching. Hopefully the birds are a little less dangerous. (We all scrubbed really well when we got back to the castle.)

There were lots of things for dinner, as usual. I had a mushroom and cheese soufflé and some sort of curried green soup and treacle tarts. Detention I showed up on time, wore gloves, and scrubbed cauldrons. When I was done with them, they were nice and clean and PSS dismissed me to shower and bed.

**5 September Thursday**

Today was flying lessons. We were supposed to have them on Tuesday as well, but Madame Hooch wasn't well. Today was also hot. Not a great day for outdoor classes and an even worse day for being cooped up in a closed room with the Stuttering Wonder. I went to see Madame Pomfrey again, although this time Hermione walked me there. We spent the whole walk slagging him, and you've got to be a bad professor if Hermione's down on you.

Again the headache disappeared as soon as I got away from the room, and again Madame Pomfrey couldn't find anything to cause headaches, although she said my scar looked a bit raw. She gave me some salve for it, which felt lovely and cool, and excused us to the library.

My study group has decided we are going to do self-study for DADA as well as for history, so we looked through the book, decided how much of it we would have to cover each week, and set ourselves a one foot essay on the difference between hexes, jinxes, and curses. (And writing "It's all completely arbitrary" in very big letters was declared unacceptable.) We decided we'd switch essays and each read each other's on Tuesday, and this evening we'd ask PSS who would be the best person to ask for practical training.

Lunch was good, dance was fun. This time I partnered Sally Anne Perks, who is an amazing dancer - she's been taking ballet lessons since she was four. Her father is a wizard who pays child support but she'd never met him until she got her Hogwarts letter. (Her parents split up before she was born.) Perks is actually her mother's surname, her father is a Rowle (Lestrange clients) which is one of the families in the Sacred 28, amusingly enough. She's from Croydon and she's a bit homesick. It's always been just her and her mother, and she's worried how her mother is managing without her. Sally Anne's older than I am, but so is everyone. (Her birthday's January 18.) Her favorite color is cornflower blue and she hates pink.

Flying was brilliant. We had it with the Griffindors, so I helped Neville and reminded him that we'd practiced less than a week ago, and he did fine. After checking each of us on the basics, Madame Hooch let those of us who were already comfortable with flying go play catch. I got scolded for being a bit too daring in some of my catches and PSS introduced me to Marcus Flint, our Quiddich captain. I'm to be trained up as reserve Seeker, although I won't actually be able to play until next year.

The school brooms are awful, though. I'm going to talk to Mr. Malfoy about an anonymous donation of some decent ones. Hard to care about broom care when these are so hopeless.

Extracurriculars were fun, as usual. In Magical Art, we're discussing the differences between it and muggle art at present, since we're not going to be ready to perform charms until after Halloween. In Art we're working with pastels.

In Astrology we worked on rising signs and discussed houses and house systems. She assigned us a paper for over the weekend: decide which system of houses we think is the best, and explain why. No particular length, just as long as we need to get our opinion across. She said that "just because" and "it's the easiest" will not be considered acceptable answers, so she supposes we should at least fill six inches, four in a pinch if our argument is really succinct.

Dinner I had saag paneer over basmati rice. Yum! And a rose lassi, and banana raita, and rice pudding for pudding. Then I went to detention with PMM and she had me spend it writing an essay explaining what I should have done instead. After that I headed back, and since it wasn't curfew yet, Theo and I got to hang out and play chess and stuff.

Tango says I don't pay him enough attention and I definitely need to devote more time to what an incredible cat he is. Which he is. He's great company and he has a magnificent purr and he makes this neat "mip" noise whenever he jumps on something, and he always has a lot to say for himself. He keeps the bed nice and warm, too, and all stretched out, he is almost as long as I am tall. The other guys are very polite to him.

Tomorrow I have to ask Greg what's up with him being uncomfortable that Draco and Chip have noticed that he's smart and likes to study. It'll be an interesting conversation, since he hardly ever talks.


	6. Six and Seven September, 1991

**6 September 1991 Friday**

Potions! Today is potions! And it's going to be a busy day cos I want to talk to PSS before breakfast and Greg afterwards. I found out that the on-call house elf for Slytherin is named Vine, and I asked him could he please bring me either coffee or tea, whichever he prefers, fixed the way PSS likes it. Either way, he's probably going to say "What is it _now_, Black?" but at least this way he'll have caffeine.

**Evening**

I had a good long talk with PSS. I need advice. I've had wealth and power dumped in my lap. I could figure out how to lounge about being a spoiled brat all on my own with a little work, but the hat said I could do the most good in Slytherin, and I need help figuring out what to do exactly and how to do it. And when he said not to tell anyone about Theo, did that include Mr. Malfoy? And is there any way to have face to face conferences with Mr. Malfoy while I'm at school? And, what things should I be doing now to protect all my people from the Dark Lamprey if he does come back?

And he asked me why him? And I said because I trust him and because I think we're alike in some ways. He looked like he was going to say something scornful, but I was expecting that and said please sir, before you laugh, hear me out, and if you think my reasons are stupid, I'll go away and stop bothering you. Cos, I know he's like me. He hears and sees everything around him, just like me. He always knows who's behind him, just like me, and he won't sit with his back to an open space any more than I will. And he's reading and judging people's movements and gestures and expressions _all the time_, just like me. Yes, I have wealth and power and influence now, and technically you could say I was born to it, but from my perspective, I'm the cat who fell in the cream pot, and I'm worried about drowning.

He thought for a second and said he'd heard something about me moving my relatives into a grand estate, and I said yes, guilty as charged. My aunt and uncle were for sale, I had the price, and I _bought_ them. And while I was at it, I did something nice for Mrs. Figg, who was much more like a parent to me, or, at least a grandparent, than my aunt and uncle ever were. I know PMM noticed things wrong at my house and sent him 'round to check, I could see him assessing everything (he raised an eyebrow at me and said that people rarely find him that obvious, but that's the thing - underneath, he doesn't trust _anything_ any more than I do), I'm sure he figured out that I'd only just been moved into that room, and if we hadn't sold the house, I could show him the cupboard I had lived in up until then. No need, he said, Professor McGonnagle noticed me going to the cupboard under the stairs to change from rags to near-rags, and yes, she did indeed blackmail him into going.

And you see, I said, there's my point. I'm not asking, it's utterly none of my business, but you know what it's like not to be safe or belong anywhere, right down to the bone where it will never leave you, so I feel like I can trust you. Even if what I can trust you to do is protect yourself at all costs, that makes sense to me. People claiming to have my best interests at heart, those are the ones who make no sense at all.

So we talked, and he agreed to advise me as best he could, and asked me, other than being Theo's friend, _please_ leave that to him to deal with. Abused children are depressingly common in Slytherin (and Hufflepuff; he and PPS get together fairly often to compare notes) and he's dealt with it before, and he and Lucius are old friends, so if he needs something from him, he can ask without incurring too much debt. He gave me carte blanche to handle Greg's problem, though, so long as I leave the various parents out of it, and if I find that they are part of the problem, to please come to him first. In fact, any time I notice someone or something bigger than a lost butterfly that needs rescuing, please come to him first. I agreed, and we are going to meet every Friday before breakfast for the rest of the year, and I thanked him profusely.

And then I paused. Wolfsbane. Yes, he does make more of a profit if we buy directly from him, so from now on we are going to, and he will talk to Lucius and the wolf about it. I said he doesn't have to deal with Remus, really, just I need wolfsbane for him since he works for me, and keeping him supplied with it is part of his contract. And he paused, shook his head slightly and said that one of his life goals was to be at _least_ as mature as an eleven-year-old, and he would manage.

And then I ate breakfast with everyone, and I had waffles and fruit and cream, and I got to try waffles with lingonberries, so now I can tell Hannah that they are really good.

I caught up with Greg after breakfast, and I told Draco and Chip that I wanted to talk just to him if that was OK, and we'd catch up with them at class, so they went on ahead and Greg & I walked together.

Walk, walk, walk.

"So, Greg, Slytherclaw."

Kicks rocks. "They're confused."

"You three grew up together. Chip's your best friend, or at least I think he is. They know you better than anyone, and they both think you're smart."

"If I were really smart, I'd stop reading so much and be more like Chip like I'm supposed to be."

"Huh? Chip's already like Chip. Howcome you can't be like Greg?"

Throws rock. "Because Goyles aren't scholars. Goyles are dairymen or henchmen. I'm here as Draco's bodyguard, my job is to get just good enough grades to stay in the same classes he's in, no better, and to knock heads together if he says to. Do as I'm told, when I'm told, and don't think. Definitely don't think that I'm smarter and more Slytherin than that annoying little ponce I'm shackled to any day of the week and twice on Sundays... Oh, shite. Shite bugger shite piss..."

"It's OK, Greg, I'm not going to tell him or anyone else you said that."

Kicks more rocks. "Thanks."

Walk, walk, walk.

"Y'know, he's a lot better since you started arguing with him. Thanks for that, from both of us."

"You're welcome. Erm... I only argue with him because I feel like it, you know."

"I know, that's why it works. You're Harry Potter. You're Lord Black. You're someone important whose opinion he can't dismiss. He has to care what you think, and you think he's wrong, and you tell him when he's being a prat. We can't do that, even though we notice. Merlin, do we notice."

Walk, walk, walk.

"If I ask Draco to second you to me, would that make things better or worse? You'd only be switching one master for another."

Stop walking, grab me by the shoulders. "Harry. You want everything to be fair and nice. That's a great ambition all by itself, cos things aren't. I'm a Goyle. I'll always have a master, that's just how it is. You have the right to call me for your service instead of Draco's if you want to, because his family is sworn to you now just as strongly as mine is to his. ... Stronger, I think. And if you want to do that, that would be, as you like to put it, brilliant. Just don't shove Draco into a plate of mash for me, OK?"

"I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"Nope."

"Can I make it an official part of your duties to tell me when I'm being a prat?"

"Remember, Caesar, thou art but mortal? Sure."

We were a bit late to Herbology. After class I asked PPS if the fact that it was official House of Black business, would that help? She asked me if the official House of Black business had anything to do with why Greg was suddenly looking more cheerful and actually participating in class, and I allowed as how it might, and she told me good job, dear, now go catch up with my friends. No points? No points, and no detention. Run along dear. You know, Professor Sprout, I asked the hat to put me in Hufflepuff. And she said I would have been welcomed, but that I am doing so much good right where I am.

And we studied, and I asked Draco and he said sure, and just having me here had shifted power balances about enough that he didn't feel as much like he needed two guys guarding his back all the time. So now Greg's my man instead of Draco's. I'd still rather he was his own man, but maybe when I grow up I can fix it.

And we studied a bit and talked a bit, and then charms was charms (I like theory, but I am really looking forward to November) and for lunch I tried a lobster roll and ended up in the hospital wing and missed lunch and potions and extracurriculars. And before I could even ask, Prefect Jones told me that I do not owe her a life debt, because keeping firsties alive and healthy is her job. (I have got to learn the epi-pen spell.)

While I was lying in the hospital wing wondering if dying was really all that bad considering hot awful not dying was feeling, Madame Pomfrey checked me for other allergies, cos I said I was sure I'd eaten prawns before with no ill effects. She also called a house elf to bring the remains of the lobster rolls from my end of the table. I slept off and on the whole afternoon, although I saw PSS come in to talk to Madame Pomfrey and I think he stopped to look at me and cast a few spells, and so did Professor Dumbledore. I was kind of out of it, though, so I might have dreamed it.

But I wasn't allowed to go to dinner, I had my meal brought straight from the kitchen by a house elf, and it was chicken soup with rice, which was nice and soothing. After dinner, she said she wanted to keep me overnight for observation, but she let my friends come in and talk to me. (Only two at a time though.)

Hermione was really upset and said that she and her friends are all working on learning the epi-pen spell (she told me the name, but I was too fuzzy to remember it). Theo and Millie and Greg and Chip and Draco and Blaise and Prefect Jones and some seventh years I remember from the House of Black meeting came by, and Hannah and Susan and Ernie and Sally Anne and Cedric and Percy and Neville and Ron and Seamus and Dean and all the Ravenclaw girls, and Madame Pomfrey finally said enough was enough, everybody out. I asked if Greg could stay, and she said all right, one friend. I asked her if she could please have Draco explain to the other Slytherins why Greg and not one of them, and she said she would.

Greg said he seemed to be doing a crap job so far, but I pointed out that nobody knew I needed protecting from lobsters. He said now that he knows, he'll be watching. I told him I knew I had eaten prawns before and he asked to be excused to talk to Professor Snape _right now_. I said go, and he left the hospital wing quietly and then he _ran_. I'm sleepy, so I guess I'll find out what that was all about in the morning.

**7 September Saturday**

Mr. Malfoy was waiting by my bed with Madame Pomfrey, Professor Snape, Greg, Prefect Jones, and Professor Dumbledore when I woke up, and Tango was lying on the bed with me. Greg was sitting next to me, Prefect Jones was standing behind PSS, and it looked like all the adults were arguing, although I couldn't hear a thing. Greg had his "I am a stupid brick and I understand nothing you say" face on, so I can only imagine what his morning has been like. PD was twinkling at people, PSS was furious, Mr. Malfoy was looking cold and superior, and Madame Pomfrey looked like she was past ready to throw all non-patients out of the infirmary. Prefect Jones looked half amused, half worried.

They finally noticed I was awake and watching them and PD took down the silencing spell. PD was telling Mr. Malfoy that he really must insist that he not upset me with details inappropriate for a boy of my age. Mr. Malfoy said that he did not report to Professor Dumbledore, only Lord Black, and as Lord Black's regent, he needed to consult with me on certain details, which made some information not only appropriate, but essential. They looked like they were all going to get into it again, and they didn't notice me trying to get their attention (well, PSS did, but they weren't listening to him either), so I finally stood up and yelled "What the bloody fucking hell is going on around here?"

Madam Pomfrey scolded me for my language, but everyone else shut up, so I could hear PSS mumble "five points" and from the look he gave me, he meant to, not from. Mr. Malfoy sailed right through the conversational gap with, "Lord Black, it appears you have been poisoned."

That shut me up and started everyone else going again. I must have looked pretty pathetic, because Greg stood up and yelled, "Oi! Shut up all of you, you're bothering Lord Black!"

And they shut up. And Madame Pomfrey said if PD wasn't going to say anything to the point, he could go now, and perhaps Professor Snape and Miss Jones could sit down over here and let Mr. Malfoy talk with his ward. And it was done, and I offered up prayers to anyone who was listening in thanks for Greg and Madame Pomfrey.

And Mr. Malfoy and PSS talked with me about the fact that I was poisoned, and what I had been poisoned with (a poison that causes severe anaphylactic shock) and _how_ I might have been poisoned (nobody has a scooby) and what were going to do about it. I put my foot down on having Greg taste all my food, and the adults agreed, and said that since this didn't work, whoever poisoned me would probably try something else next time. Next time? Well, someone obviously wants me dead. I'm not dead. Ergo, they need to try again. Bloody hell. Mr. Malfoy said he was prepared to withdraw me from school and have me tutored if necessary, but he hoped with proper vigilance it wouldn't be.

So then we discussed what "proper vigilance" would look like, and what we thought the would-be assassin would try next, and we agreed that I would not be going anywhere alone for a while and that I was to have at least two people with me at all times (Even in the loo? Yes) and that one of them will need to be an upper year. Prefect Jones was going to sit here with me and Greg for now, and Mr. Malfoy and the professor were going to meet with all the fifth through seventh year Black clients to form up a schedule and to see if anyone had noticed anything.

So the adults left, and Madame Pomfrey came in and transferred me to a private room, with a desk the Prefect Jones could use, and put some alarm wards on the door and left us alone for a bit. We sat there feeling awkward for a bit, then Greg noticed a chessboard, so we played chess until PSS came to spring me and Madame Pomfrey agreed to let him.

By then it was after lunch (lunch was more soup, this time with a bit of bread) and Professor Snape said that he and Mr. Malfoy agreed that I wasn't to go outdoors unless it was absolutely necessary, and that my Herbology classes and scouting troop weren't being considered necessary. The Ravenclaw girls have apparently volunteered to bring me copies of their notes.

PSS warned me that even if I hadn't been poisoned, the school rumor mill would be insisting that I was, so while we should stick to it being a seafood allergy as our official story, the perpetrator is still going to be feeling a bit exposed at the moment.

We got back to the common room, and all my friends and associates were waiting for me. Professor Snape put a few privacy spells on a conference room and said that everyone had one hour, or until in his judgment I had had enough.

So then we sat and dissected yesterday. The consensus seems to be that the culprit has got to be one of the upper-year Lestranges in our house. A couple of people looked at Theo, and I said that Theo is my friend and I trust him, and someone else noted that he's a firstie anyway. We decided that we need a list of all of our suspects and if we know any of them were unaccounted for any time yesterday. And for the moment, except for Theo and Cedric, no Lestranges are allowed anywhere near me. I asked if there was any way we could do something fun now, so we ended up with the seventh years, whose names I really need to get straight, teaching us how to do the spells we should have learned in DADA and then we ended up playing a game kind of like free-form ping pong with a ball of magical light.

The whole group walked me down to dinner, including Tango, who doesn't seem inclined to let me out of his sight for a second, and nobody let me eat anything until everyone else had some. I'm feeling generally off fish, so I had roast chicken and rice pilaf and glazed carrots and skipped the treacle tart. Then a bunch of us played exploding snap and we agreed that we would go over potions notes together tomorrow and now sleep.


	7. Eight through Twelve September, 1991

**8 September 1991 Sunday**

And I though Friday and Saturday were bad. Today was really something.

It started out well. All the guys came over and jumped on me to make sure I was all right and then we all met up in the common room - the whole Black contingent, plus the rest of the first year Slytherins - and everyone decided that I needed lots of chocolate. A couple of people said, "No, that's just dementors," but everyone else agreed that chocolate cures everything, so I need lots, and since everyone's tasting things for me, that means we all need lots. So Travis Makehay (one seventh year down, six to go) called Vine and asked him if there was any pain au chocolat and explained (and Draco told me that we were lucky this was a Slytherin house elf, cos a normal one would be weeping and wailing and punishing himself at the idea that anyone would need tasters for his food) and he brought us baskets and baskets of it, enough that we decided to share with the Lestranges as well. And the seventh year Lestranges swore that they have not yet attempted anything against me at all.

After that, some people wandered off and some of us sat around trying to think of something to do. I pointed out that I had missed the first potions class, and Draco hopped up and ran off and came back dragging Professor Snape. "Please, Uncle Sev... I mean Professor! Harry missed The Speech. You can't miss The Speech!" And PSS sighed and asked if we all really wanted to hear the whole thing again, and everyone said "Yes, please!" so he recited this brilliant speech about potions and foolish wand waving and stoppering death - if we aren't as hopeless a pack of dunderheads as he usually had to deal with, and then swung right into a pop quiz, wherein he told me that "at any well-stocked apothecary shop" could be used as a technically correct answer for any question about where to find an object related to potions, but he was looking for an answer that displayed a bit more understanding than that. So I told him that a bezoar is found in the stomach of a goat, and then he turned to the others and snapped "Well, why aren't you writing this down?" And then we all applauded and the corners of his mouth twitched and he gave us a mock bow and told us to stay out of trouble, if possible, and left again. I agreed with Draco that yes, I did have to hear that speech.

Everyone told me that the only other thing I had missed was brewing a boil cure potion and seeing Neville explode his and have to go to the hospital wing. (Apparently I was too sick at the time to notice.)

And after hanging about a bit more, we decided to head out for lunch. We went down all as a huge group, with Tango leading the way, and got mobbed when we came into the great hall by people who wanted to see that I really was OK.

As then suddenly Tango let out this scream. I've heard tomcats yell at each other from indoors, but it's a _heck_ of a lot louder when it's right next to you. He looked absolutely terrifying and everyone dove out of his way and he ran at Ron, who nearly pissed himself, and his rat jumped out of his pocket and started running and Tango leaped on it, and the rat turned into a fat little ratty-looking guy, and Percy and PSS and some of the seventh years all stunned and incarceroused him and it turns out he was Peter Pettigrew. Everyone saw him, and everyone heard PSS and PMM identify him, and someone called Madame Bones and Mr. Malfoy and Remus and we all went to the headmaster's office and then down to the DMLE, and Percy and Ron got taken in for questioning and Mr. Weasley got called, and Mr. Malfoy demanded that Pettigrew be given veritaserum and questioned. So they did that, and Sirius Black is innocent, and they went and got him out of Azkaban and took him to St. Mungo's, and I stole Sirius' title! He was innocent and Lord Black disinherited him and made me Lord Black, and I have to give it back!

And then Professor Snape gave me a calming potion and said if it were up to him, he would force-feed one to everyone in the vicinity. And he and Mr. Malfoy and Remus got me out of there and took me to a private room at some magical restaurant or another and got me lunch. I was worried about Ron and Percy, but they said that Mr. Weasley was there to look out for them, they were just looking out for me. And even with the calming draught I was still bothered by the fact that he was innocent and spent ten years in Azkaban and I stole his title, and PSS said that ten years in Azkaban was the usual sentence for attempted murder anyway, and I said, oh, right. And Mr. Malfoy said that from what he remembered of his cousin-in-law, I could attempt to give the title back to him once he was well enough to get out of St. Mungo's, but he would most likely refuse and apologize for saddling me with it and Remus said that was very likely quite right.

And either way, it will be some months before he's well enough for that conversation, so I'll leave it alone for now, but I told them that I need to review the trial transcripts for all of my people as soon as possible. Mr. Malfoy and Remus said I'd have them by Tuesday evening at the latest, and one or the other of them would bring them personally, and did I want Bellatrix's as well, and I said yes, please.

I asked Professor Snape if there was any way I could go back to the hospital wing tonight, cos I really need space to think, and he said so long as I bring Greg and Tango with me, he was sure Madame Pomfrey would be all right with it.

So now I'm back in the private room again, and Tango has a can of tuna fish all to himself and I asked Greg if him being my man now means he won't tell anybody if I freak out, and he said of course not, that's one of the main parts of the deal. He told me that after all that's happened in the last few days he's feeling pretty shaken up and off-balance, and he's hardly had to deal with anything compared to what I've been through. And Tango purred and head-butted both of us, and we both petted him, and Greg said he's a hell of a cat. Tango nosed both of our faces and it might have happened that we both cried a bit, but neither of us will ever tell, and Tango purred for both of us and let both of us hug him. All three of us are bunking down in the same bed just because it feels warmer and safer that way.

**9 September Monday**

Ugh. I like school, but I am not ready for it to be Monday yet. Professor Snape came by the hospital room to get both of us for breakfast and told Tango that he was wonderfully helpful, but would be please go back to the dorm now (and he did), and also told me that since Pettigrew was probably our poisoner, I was free to attend Quiddich try-outs this afternoon, as well as to go to Herbology this morning.

And it was pissing down all day. You couldn't hear it in the dungeons, but anywhere with a roof or windows to the outdoors was really loud. We were soaked to the skin by the time we got to Herbology. PPS spelled us all dry, thank goodness, although Hermione's hair going from sopping wet to completely dry that fast made quite a sight, and apparently Draco's hair when not slicked down is almost as bad. We all had a good laugh, and Professor Sprout said that today we were not going to study Herbology, we were going to study quietness. And she had us all sit as comfortably as we could, focus on a plant, and just sit and empty our minds to nothing but the green and the rain. She would stand watch, she said, all we were to do was be silent. By the time class was over, I felt clean. Like I just had the best and longest cry ever and my whole insides were swept out and waiting to begin again. And at the end of class she came to each of us in turn and brought us out of it, and silently hugged us and cast some sort of umbrella spell on us and sent us on our way.

We all walked back in the rain, still quiet, full of nothing but rain. I think somewhere inside of me for the rest of my life there will be one spot that is just one plant, and the rain, and knowing that, over there where I can't see her, Professor Sprout is standing guard to make sure nothing disturbs our silence.

Professor Flitwick noticed our mood, and changed his lesson plan to discuss the theory behind mind magics, and told us about Occlumency, the practice of occluding one's thoughts so that they are harder to red, and legilimency, the magic of reading surface thoughts. He said he thought we might have made a good start on Occlumency today and asked for a volunteer. I raised my hand and he looked at me and said "Only with your permission." I nodded, and he waved his wand and said "Legilimens" very quietly and looked into my eyes. Inside my head I was still just sitting there listening to the rain, and for a little bit I could feel Professor Flitwick standing there next to me and then he was gone.

And he said yes, that is indeed a very good start to Occlumency, and if we concentrated on our memories of this every night before we went to sleep, we would find that we slept better and woke more refreshed.

Lunch felt strange. The great hall was so noisy. And apparently whether I really have a shellfish allergy or not, the sight of prawns or lobster rolls makes me feel like sicking up, so I stuck with cheese and tomato sandwiches.

After lunch was transfiguration again. PMM said she was happy to see me healthy again, and while the rest of the class worked on turning matchsticks into pins, Theo and I got to work on turning thimbles into thyme sprigs. That was a lot more difficult, and neither of us quite got it, but she said we'd made excellent progress.

For scouting today we worked on knot-tying. I asked Professor Dumbledore about binding and loosing the wind with knots, and he said that's a rather specialized sort of magic that we might try to learn when we get older.

Then dinner with enormous loaves of raisin and almond challah, and Quiddich try-outs, despite what seemed like a monsoon out there. Adrian Pucey and I had a seeker's duel while the others did whatever they were doing. It was fun despite the rain and we almost gave up on it a couple of times, but we finally found it and I caught it and we said sod the rest of them and went in to shower and dry off and change.

The house elves had hot chocolate waiting for us when we came in, which was very much appreciated. And I told the guys how tryouts went, or at least as much of them as I saw, and we hung out a bit, and I am going to try meditating on the rain like Professor Flitwick said.

**10 September Tuesday**

Still raining. Ravenclaw Quiddich tryouts are tonight, and I am not going to go watch them. I am very thankful I don't have any outdoor classes today.

Hot pastrami sandwich for lunch, roast chicken and matzo ball soup and fancy challah and honey cake for dinner and cat purring for relaxing after by and today was a nice quiet day.

**11 September Wednesday**

Rain off and on all day and windy! Tonight was Hufflepuff Quiddich tryouts, and I dropped by to cheer Ced on, but didn't stay long. Roast beef sandwiches for lunch, lamb with mint sauce and couscous for dinner, and another quiet day.

**12 September Thursday**

Some rain, lots of fog, and the sort of cold that eats into your bones. I don't know any Griffindor Quiddich players, so I skipped their tryouts. Tango came along with us to art classes, so we all tried drawing him, and Professor Fernsby showed us how animating a picture works. This one was only minimally animated, but I have a drawing of Tango that rolls over and purrs.

And I totally forgot to write about getting all the trial transcripts. I am very glad I'm not related to Bellatrix anymore, although some of the people still on the outside are almost as bad. Even Mr. Malfoy has done some pretty awful things, but, these are my people. They look to me. I'm to lead them and none of them can go back to the Dark Lutefisk because Grandfather made them all swear to me, and I'm meant to keep him from torturing them to death if and when he returns. I think I really need to find out what's good about these people, and how to encourage that.

Chicken curry for lunch, chicken cacciatore for supper, and I definitely have something to discuss with Professor Snape tomorrow morning.


	8. Thirteen September, 1991

**13 September 1991 Friday**

I sat with the Griffindors for breakfast this morning because I hadn't spoken to Percy or Ron since the whole mess with Scabbers. They were both apologizing all over the place and saying "You've got to believe me, I didn't know!" and I said, well, of course. And they looked at me and I said really, guys, if one of you had said to me, you know, I think my old pet rat is actually an unregistered rat animagus who is also a Deatheater who is hiding out with my family until the coast is clear, I'd have seriously worried about you. The whole reason it worked was that it was so completely crazy no one would have thought to watch for it. Although, now that we know it's a possibility, are there actually such things as anti-animagus wards? Percy said he thought there were and he'd look into it.

And so we hung out and caught up with each other and I apologized for disappearing for the entire week, but after all that, I really needed a bit of quiet time. Everybody said that made perfect sense, and I got introduced to the rest of the Griffindors, including the famous twins, who were looking a bit tired. Apparently, Griffindor's first Quidditch practice was an hour before breakfast. Percy's dorm mate, Oliver Wood, is the Quidditch captain, and didn't look tired at all. I overheard a few jokes that Oliver is the world's first Quidditch-sexual. Apparently he and Percy are the only fifth year Griffindor boys. What happened to the rest of them? There never were any, they were it. Wow. I'd though the hat tried to keep things even, but I guess it really does just send people where they need to go. Funny our class came out so close to even then.

And they told me that today is nice and sunny, finally, but cold. Not first frost yet, but still pretty uncomfortable. Oh well, I have gloves, and the greenhouses will be warm.

First thing this morning I met with PSS. He said he didn't know what I wanted him to say, they were terrible people. Some of them were in it because they were the stereotypical angry young men who wanted something to lash out against. Some were in it because they liked killing, torturing, and/or raping. Some joined up because they were afraid of the social changes that had been happening and wanted to protect their way of life. Some joined because they were ordered to by someone they couldn't ignore. Toward the end, some joined because they were sure the Dark Lemon would win, and they didn't want to be on the losing side. And some joined out of fear.

Once you were in, though, the only way out was death, and for anyone the Dark Ligularia perceived as betraying him, that death was slow, terrible, and public, to make sure everyone else knew the price of betrayal. So in the end, some did horrible things for the fun of it and some because they were afraid not to, but either way, the victims are just as dead, and their deaths were just as horrific.

So what am I to do with them? Well, does Lazarus Long have any useful advice? Erm, you can't be afraid to shoot your own dog, but if any of those guys are mad dogs, I can't do anything about it yet. PSS pointed out that I can't take any of them on in battle, no, but there are still things I can do. Like the fact that Grandfather made them swear loyalty and obedience to me above all others, living or dead, in this world and the next? Yes, Black, _exactly_ like that. So I could just have Mr. Malfoy send orders to anyone who isn't one of his operatives that I want them all to obey the law, both magical and muggle? I need to work on the wording of that a bit, but yes. And I can consult Mr. Malfoy on that anyway. He has years of practice selecting his words very carefully.

So on the way to breakfast, I sent an owl to Mr. Malfoy saying that I would like to speak with him, at his convenience.

Class was class. I thanked PPS for the help with meditation, and she said that I was very welcome. I am still partners with Hermione, but Greg works the next station over so he can keep an eye out for trouble.

It was still brisk enough that we didn't want to study outdoors, so we tried going to the library. It was a little crowded, but we managed. The castle needs more common areas. Maybe after potions class I can ask PSS if there's an unused classroom anywhere we can turn into a study area.

Lunch was spaghetti, which is Greg's favorite. I decided that I needed to learn the names of the rest of the seventh years in my cohort, so I went around and asked. Travis Makehay I already mentioned. He's big and burly and looks like a farmer and he has grey eyes and brownish-blond hair. Letitia Blishwick is tall and rangy and kind of boyish. Her hair is cut like Christopher Robin's. Peregrin Bainbridge has golden-brown skin and green eyes and has brown hair that he wears in cornrows. Tertia Zabini is only distantly related to Blaise and looks nothing like him. She has tanned white skin and long black hair that she wears in a French braid. Sylvester Cornfoot is Steven Cornfoot's older brother and looks just like him. Terence Higgs I know from Quiddich, I just didn't realize he was a seventh year. Kevin Bletchley is Miles' older brother. He's ginger and gave up Quidditch to focus on his NEWTs. And that's the lot.

And I got letters. One from Luna, one from Shack, one from Remus, one from Mrs. Figg, and a note and a package from Mr. Malfoy. The package was more of Grandfather's journals, so I need to set aside some reading time as well as time to read and answer letters.

I worry a little about Greg. I have "I'm only eleven!" freak outs all the time. Has anyone ever pointed out to him that he's only eleven too? Chip is happy with just following Draco around and looming occasionally. Greg seems to think he needs to be my entire security detail all by himself. I just wanted to give him space to use his mind, I didn't mean to run him ragged. I think when I see Mr. Malfoy, I should enquire into exactly what the duties of a henchman are, and does the fact that this one is only a hench_kid_ make any difference?

Anyway. Potions! This week I actually got to go. I partnered Neville just like I said I would, and while we were working I explained to him about meditation and focus and told him how Remus spent time training me to ignore distractions. PSS made some cutting remarks about the cauldron not exploding, and I told him politely that Neville is not hopeless, he's just nervous, and that I plan on working with him on that in the coming weeks. He told Neville, "See that you pay attention." I respect PSS a lot, but he can be an awful git at times.

So anyway, once we got done I asked him what extracurriculars he has, and he said Muggle music, fitness, and Frog choir on Mondays Wednesdays Fridays, and chess club and Xylomancy on Tuesdays Thursdays. The only Friday one that sounded like it would be easy to skip is muggle music, so I asked him if maybe we could get together Saturday after lunch, and that's fine, so were all set. I totally forgot about asking PSS about a group study area, but I can always ask him later.

In scouting Professor Dumbledore taught us how to tie dye. I just have to write that again. Professor Dumbledore taught us how to tie dye. I think that's a sentence I'm not going to get tired of any time soon. I mean that's up there in bizarreitude with pet rats turning into Deatheaters. Where the heck did he learn it? I have this mental image now of PD dropping out to follow the Dead for a year or two. Tie dyed robes, Birkenstocks and John Lennon glasses. I've got to share this with Hermione, I think she might be the only one who'd get it.

Dinner had warm fresh challah bread. Who cares what else there was? Although, I did actually eat something besides bread, mainly because Draco complained. I told him proper young purebloods don't say "Oi!" He said if I didn't quit hogging the bread, I'd find out what else proper young purebloods don't say. A couple of upper years said something about "Here comes the Malfoy/Black Comedy Hour," and suggested we take our act on the road. So anyway, I left the bread alone, with great dignity, may I add, and tried something called American Chop Suey, which seems to be elbow noodles, tomato sauce, and mince with bits of celery and sweet peppers in it. It wasn't bad and it looked like something that would mix together quickly. I'll be sure and tell AP about it when I go home.

Home. Wow. I can't believe I wrote that, or that I thought that. It's a new home, though, that I've only ever seen pictures of. It'll probably take a bit to get used to.

Football tonight was fun like it always is. I played goalie and Greg played defense and our team won. It was nice to have it finally stop raining long enough that we could play again. I wonder how early snow falls here?

Anyway, tomorrow morning is our first Quiddich practice, and I'm supposed to practice with the team, so I'd better get some sleep.

[AN: For future reference, would you rather have a short chapter now or a longer one later?]


	9. Fourteen and Fifteen September, 1991

**14 September 1991 Saturday**

Today was busy, but not insanely so, Or at least not until after dinner when everything went to hell. Up, breakfast, off to Quiddich practice, Greg and Tango both walked me there so I told Greg that I was worried he was working too hard, and he said he needs to do a better job so I don't decide to give him back to Draco. I said, but I thought that was all agreed, and he said, well, yes, we _agreed_ that I was going to take his oath, but I haven't actually _done_ it yet, and he thought maybe with the whole poisoning business I was wondering if he was really competent enough, so he was just trying to do the best job he knew how. And I said oh. Greg, I'm an idiot. It's not that I don't want your oath, it's just that with everything that went on, it kind of slipped my mind that agreeing to do something and actually doing it aren't the same thing, and I'm really really sorry and, erm, I don't actually know how to take an oath or what we're supposed to say. And he looked a lot happier at that (Greg is far too good at looking grim) and said that that's the easy part. I'll be meeting with Mr. Malfoy probably sometime this weekend anyway, so we can just ask him.

That made me a lot less worried. And I told Greg that once we had everything all settled, he was to remember that part of his job was to tell me when I was being stupid. So we shook on it and went to Quidditch and everything was fine.

Practice didn't start until 10:00, so by then the morning fog had all burned off and it was turning into a nice early autumn day. It's not actually autumn for another week, but Scotland is rather colder than Surrey.

Practice was fun. Adrian, Terence and I just flew around finding and catching the snitch until lunchtime. Being the seeker isn't really like being on a team. The others are playing a team sport, but for the seeker, it's just two seekers and a snitch. Next practice we're going to work on racing, and legal and illegal ways to slow down the other seeker.

We didn't really need to shower after cos what we'd been doing wasn't all that strenuous, and after we washed up a bit and changed into regular clothes, Marcus said we were free to go, so we met up with my two bodyguards and the four of us plus one cat headed to lunch, where I found I'm still quite off fish. I ended up having toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, with coconut biscuits for pud.

After lunch, Greg and I met up with Neville. I'd had him bring his potions kit with him, and the three of us just went for a walk by the lake. He wasn't sure what that had to do with brewing, but I said I didn't want to waste ingredients that we'd actually paid money for, so I thought we could see what we could scrounge. I'd completely forgotten how amazing Neville is with plants. Greg and I got quite the Herbology lesson, then we just sat down and went over various methods of preparation. Apparently Neville's never cooked, either, so we were really starting from scratch. (Greg's never done anything more than peeling and scrubbing, so he wasn't much ahead of Neville, but he's less nervous. Heck, until this morning I'd have sworn that Greg doesn't _get_ nervous.) And I explained that measuring the ingredients is really important. A really good cook can often look like they're just tossing in whatever when they're cooking, but that's because they already know their ingredients really well, so they know how much is right vs. how much is too much. Before you have a feel for ingredients and what they do, it's really important to follow recipes exactly, because that's how you learn, and you don't want to put in a handful of something when the recipe calls for one or two of it any more than you want to pour the entire salt cellar on your chips.

Just a I had got to that part, Hedwig flew over with a note saying that Mr. Malfoy had come to the castle to meet with me. At the moment he was visiting with Draco and PSS, so I needn't fall all over myself apologizing, but if I could come back to the castle now, it would be greatly appreciated. I told Neville I was sorry but I had to go and he said that was OK and we agreed to meet up tomorrow to do more prep work.

When we got back, Peregrin Bainbridge was waiting for us in the common room and escorted us to a sitting room, where Draco and Chip and Mr. Malfoy and PSS were relaxing and drinking tea. I said I hoped I hadn't kept anyone waiting, but I had been working with Greg and Neville on potions ingredient preparation. Mr. Malfoy said that maintaining my alliances was always a worthwhile endeavor. PSS and Draco and Chip made to leave, but I stopped them just in case they were needed for the whole oath thing. I think I had forgotten to tell PSS what exactly we'd worked out, but he did tell me I was free to solve the problem as I chose.

So we did the oath thing, with PSS as witness, and it was way more involved than I was expecting. If I ever have to do it again, I'll need help. I asked Mr. Malfoy afterwards if there was any way Greg could ever be his own man, and he said certainly, if once I reached adulthood I want to release him from his vow, that's my prerogative, and by then I should have a decent understanding of the consequences.

And working with Neville and Greg had reminded me about Mrs. Figg's potion, so I asked PSS about it on the way out. He stopped and thought about it and said, yes, he did know that one. It's a very old recipe, but it's a good one, nice and simple and unexplosive. The only part that's at all uncommon is the new moon water, he'd have to check how much he had of that, but he said he'd add that one to his lesson plans and see if he could remember any similar antique potions that were good for neophytes.

After that, I talked with Mr. Malfoy about new orders for the ex-Deatheaters and investments and the legality of employing house elves in restaurants, and I asked Mr. Malfoy why he joined the Deatheaters. I was really nervous about asking, but I have to know more about them. He said that he wasn't quite as angry a young man as Severus had been. He'd been more entranced by the Dark Linoleum's shiny new future - and he didn't have much choice anyway, as his father had been one of the Dark Licorice's classmates at Hogwarts. I said really? Wow, can you tell me his real name? He kind of turned green at that and asked me please not to ask that of him, as the conflicting vows would make his life far too interesting, and by interesting, he meant "short". I said all right, of course, sorry, but was there any way he could point me towards the information? He said he had an object that had belonged to the Dark Lightbulb when he was in school, but it's an enchanted object, and he didn't think it would be safe to just hand it over without checking it thoroughly first. I asked could he and PSS do that here, so then I could get a look at it, and he said he wouldn't know that until he had done a bit of preliminary checking, but he could tell me that his father's name was Abraxas Malfoy, and a good Slytherin ought to be able to make use of that information. So I said that I know that He Who was in Slytherin, and that he was in school with Abraxas (and that is such a great name) Malfoy, so yeah, I could definitely work with that.

And then we bade each other good day, and did our bows, and Greg and I headed for the library. There were four male Slytherins in Abraxas' year: Abraxas, Tom Riddle, Theobald Nott, Edmond Lestrange. Abraxas died last year of dragon pox, Theobald Nott is Lord Nott, whom I've met. Edmond Lestrange died in the Voldemort War, Tom Riddle got an award for service to the school (and got Mr. Hagrid expelled!) and worked for Borgin & Burkes for a while, then no more record of him. If Edmond Lestrange only faked his death, Cedric wouldn't be the Lestrange heir, so the Dork Lord must be Tom Riddle! But, Tom Riddle was a half blood orphan who was raised in a muggle orphanage. Wow. A nameless halfblood in Slytherin with all those heirs and rich guys. I think if I am right, I have my motive.

And PMM was in Griffindor a year behind Abraxas' lot! Wow, I didn't know she was that old. And Mr. Hagrid was a third year when Riddle got him expelled, and Professor Flitwick was in seventh year when Riddle was in first, and PSS was in first when Riddle was in seventh. Professor Quirrel is way younger than that, thank goodness.

And Greg says that TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE rearranged gives you I AM LORD VOLDEMORT. We worked out the Greg could be Lor' Gregoychaegyle. Fall down and worship Lor' Gregoychaegyle, the Dark Henchlord! After that, we decided we had to tell everyone, and the Black seventh years ended up carrying Greg into the great hall on a chair over their heads, calling on everyone to do just that (we decided to pronounce it gruh-GOY-chuh-gyle). It caused a lot of noise, definitely got everyone's attention, and then Travis (he seems to be the group leader) did a sonorous on himself and explained the name thing, and who Tom Riddle was, and then the hall went really nuts. Professor Quirrel fainted. Mr. Hagrid sat totally still in the middle of all the ruckus looking gobsmacked. A couple of Lestrange upper years shot curses at us, but my lot was apparently expecting that. PD had to shoot a couple of fireworks out of his wand to get everyone to calm down.

The Lestranges both got detentions and lost fifty points each, but we got ten points each for good detective work, with an extra twenty for Greg for excellent puzzle solving skills, so it more than evened out. And Greg and PSS and I got summoned to PD's office after dinner (chicken in some sort of sauce, I think?)

Professor Dumbledore and PSS both pointed out that we have very publicly exposed the secret the Deranged Lord most wanted to keep hidden. I pointed out that if he's still out there, he wants to kill me anyway, so what's one more indignity between mortal enemies? And they said I really needed to take this more seriously. And I pointed out that now everyone knows, and owls are probably winging their way all over Great Britain with the news as we speak. PD said unfortunately yes, it was in fact too late to contain the news, and I said why would you want to? Now everyone knows that the scary undead evil Dark Leper is just Tom Riddle, half blood child of those inbred lowlife Gaunts. PSS added, and Heir of Slytherin. Greg & I said huh? And they said another story to be told at another time. They told me that I need to watch my back very carefully now, and then dismissed both of us.

Greg and I headed back to the common room, which was just nuts. People were shouting at each other and jinxes were flying and the prefects were trying to enforce order but not succeeding. Greg and I snuck around the edge of the room and almost made it out before they noticed us. Then he shoved me through the door to the corridor to our dorm and locked it behind me. Now I'm keeping him company in the hospital wing while he heals up. My group backed him up, but it was quite a fight, with plenty of injuries to both sides, and Travis got his knees switched around back to front. Greg and Travis and I are all back in my private room now, and so is Tango, who is also a bit singed around the edges. He gave more than as good as he got, though. Montague is having an eye regrown. I feel sick about that, even though they tell me he tried to diffindo me. Apparently he's going to be left with some scarring, because Tango is a magical cat and _wants_ Montague to be damaged. And apparently Tango is lucky that I'm Lord Black and he was protecting me.

I feel awful. I didn't know this would happen. I definitely understand why PD and PSS were so upset with me and annoyed at me for not taking it seriously enough. I'm taking it _very_ seriously now.

**15 September Sunday**

Remus was here when I woke up. We went into another room to talk and I kind of cried on him for a bit. I have really screwed up. People are maimed because of me, and if it weren't for my social position, Tango would have been _killed_ last night. He's going to be here guarding me for the foreseeable future, although we have to work out something for the nights of the full moon and the days after. I introduced Greg and Travis and Remus, and Remus is going to be teaching Remedial DADA to all Black or Selwyn aligned Slytherins (not that there are many of the latter, I think Warrington and the Crockett twins are it - oh, and Blaise and Daphne, duh!) as well as Cedric and the Weasleys. Anyone with Deatheaters sympathies who isn't bound to House Black or House Lestrange is going to be gunning for Cedric as well as me, and quite a few of the Lestranges are probably willing to stand aside and let them. I'm not sure who becomes Lestrange heir apparent if Cedric dies, maybe they're hoping Bellatrix the Nameless will get out of Azkaban and get pregnant.

I didn't know this would happen. I thought telling everyone about Lord Vol-au-vent would be a good thing.

But Remus says that in the end it will be, and that all of this was going to happen sooner or later anyway, it was inevitable once Grandfather bound all of House Black to me. I still feel lousy.

But Greg and Travis are all healed up, so we went back and I introduced Remus to everyone, and PSS escorted us all to an abandoned classroom, where he (Remus) tested everyone on what they knew already. Cedric and Percy showed up while he was doing that, so he drafted them as assistant teachers for the time being. A few of the others complained, but he said he taught them a bit this summer, so he knows what they know. He said he was also glad to have the twins in the group, as they have quite a few useful skills we could all stand to learn, and while he was saying that PMM brought in Honoria Abbott and Neville, PPS brought in Susan Bones, and Professor Flitwick brought in Leland Greengrass. Professor Flitwick offered to stay and help, and I don't think I ever saw Remus so relieved. I never knew Professor Flitwick was a dueling champion.

Professor Flitwick ended up taking the most advanced group, Remus took the ones in the middle, and Cedric and Percy took the first and second years. We're learning a lot and we're going to be doing this every Sunday and adding anyone who is willing to swear loyalty to House Potter, Longbottom, or Black. I feel kind of like I've joined the army.

Dinner was interesting. All of us from Remedial DADA sat together and the Lestranges went and sat with the Ravenclaws. Cedric and I spent all of dinner discussing if there was any way to broker a truce between Lestrange and Black before the school descended into open civil war. No idea what I ate. It could have been worms for all I noticed.

Huh. I must have eaten lunch at some point. I think. I don't _remember_ being particularly hungry at dinner.

Anyway, it's been a day and tomorrow's back to classes, so I need to try to sleep now. No, wait, I really need to talk to Theo.

Damn. Theo's in an awful position. He and Tracey are the only Lestranges in our class. Tracey's family isn't terribly important and Tracey isn't at all highly placed in her family, so she can switch allegiances pretty easily and she's got her parents' blessing to do so. Theo _is_ important, _can't_ switch easily, and most _decidedly_ doesn't have his father's blessing. He's really upset and scared. We went to Professor Snape, and Theo is bunking down in his quarters tonight.

Greg and Draco and Blaise and Chip say I need to stop blaming myself for this mess. If I hadn't set it off this way, it just would have happened another way. I asked them if they're scared too. They all said yeah, terrified. And we're all worried about Theo.


	10. Sixteen through Thirty September, 1991

**16 September 1991 Monday**

Draco and Chip are in the hospital. They say Chip might _die_. Someone imperiused Draco to push me down the stairs after transfiguration, and he was fighting it, so he fell instead, and Chip tried to save him and he fell too and Draco fell on top of him. Houses Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle and Potter and Black have all declared a blood feud on whomever did it, so now we just need to find out who that was and _destroy_ them.

**17 September Tuesday**

Chip's still in the hospital and hasn't woken, but at least he's not dead (yet, anyway, they say it's still close). Draco's been released but hadn't left the hospital wing. Greg and I haven't been allowed to stay full time, but we come by whenever we can. Mr. Malfoy and Mr. and Mrs. Crabbe have been here since yesterday, although Mr. Malfoy comes and goes. Apparently he's got all the Black family operatives very busy. All my friends from other houses have dropped by and left cards and gifts. Mrs. Crabbe especially wasn't expecting to see some of them and has been crying a lot. Draco and Greg have been spending a lot of time with her. Greg's parents have been by as well. (Greg looks like his dad but thinks like his mom.)

I've got Theo walking with me and my bodyguards because he's no safer than I am. His father released him from his family oaths without disowning or disinheriting him. I didn't know that was possible. But on his father's death, Theo will be Lord Nott, and the Notts will no longer follow the Lestranges. Theo's really happy to have such clear evidence that his father loves him (if it wasn't his father, who was abusing him? I guess since he can't safely go home any time soon, he's safe from whoever it was) but he's also scared about what might happen to him.

We're still going to classes and doing our homework and stuff, and I'm sharing my notes with Draco, but it's kind of hard to care.

**18 September Wednesday**

Apparently it's Yom Kippur. Oh well, musli makes a perfectly good meal.

Chip's still unconscious.

**19 September Thursday**

It's Hermione's birthday. I went to the party in the Ravenclaw common room and I gave her a book on elementary runes, but it was a pretty subdued affair.

**23 September Monday**

Apparently it's some damn holiday or another. The house elves have the place all decorated with fruits and vegetables and we had lunch outdoors in this huge arbor. The rest of the school seems to be getting back to normal. I'm still visiting with Chip and his mother every day. She says I'm a nice boy, just like young master Regulus was. I looked him up. Another dead because of stupid Lord Moldysnot.

Mr. Malfoy brought the object the Dark Lampshade left with him to show PSS, and they brought it to the headmaster and there was a lot of excitement. I got to watch from behind strong wards as Professor Dumbledore destroyed it with fiendfyre. That was really impressive. You hear so much about how powerful PD is, but you don't see it in action very often.

It was a diary with Tom Riddle's name on it, and it screamed horribly as it burned. The adults told me that the Dark Lemonmeringue had ripped off a piece of his soul just like the evil wizards in fairy tales do and stored it in the diary. And apparently that's not all of them, as PSS's and Mr. Malfoy's dark marks are as dark as ever, and if he were dead for good, they would fade. So now the three of them are conferring about where else he might have put them, and how many there might be.

Oh, and during Quiddich practice tonight my broom tried to kill me. It just completely went bonkers, like some wild horse from a cowboy movie. I held on as best I could, but I would have fallen anyway I think if Adrian and Terence hadn't come over and grabbed me. Adrian's broom tried to act up too, but Terence held onto me and Adrian managed to break whatever was messing up his broom and we all landed as fast as we could. We looked in the Quiddich stands, but we couldn't find anybody. Remus says I might need to start sitting out Quiddich practices.

**24 September Tuesday**

Mr. Hagrid says something in the woods in killing unicorns. It's the full moon, too.

**25 September Wednesday**

Draco and Greg and I have detention thanks to Zacharias Sodding Smith. He said that Chip was a such a stupid lump that it didn't matter if he was awake or asleep and all of us first year Slytherins are a bunch of thin-blooded weak little crybabies. So I punched him in the face and he punched me back and Draco pulled me off and Smith and Greg got into it and PMM caught us at it and we all got detention with Filch for fighting in the halls. Oh well, at least Greg pounded the snot out of him before we got caught. And I wasn't going to be able to go to Quidditch practice anyway.

**27 September Friday**

I just got back from spending a couple of days with the centaurs.

Mr. Filch turned us over to Mr. Hagrid for detention. Mr. Hagrid was going into the Forbidden Forest to see if he could find what was killing the unicorns, and took us with him. Greg and I found it, and whatever it was made my scar hurt so much I passed out and didn't wake up until a day later in the centaurs' camp. They'd let Greg stay with me, but he was going nuts with worry, as was everyone back at the castle who had no idea where we were. I had a bunch of interesting conversations about astrology and current portents with a couple of the centaurs, and they deemed it safe for me to return and brought me and Greg back late this afternoon.

We reported right back to Professor Snape, who took us to Professor Dumbledore, and Greg told them the whole story since he was awake for most of it.

Tango hasn't let me out of his sight since I got back. I think he and Fawkes were talking while Greg was telling our story.

Chip's still alive but not awake.

**28 September Saturday**

First frost this morning. I'm glad we got back last night. Draco's been feeling lost, so he's been hanging out with me and Greg and Theo and Remus. Blaise has been hanging out with the girls, mostly. The whole bunch of us went down to the hospital wing to keep Mrs. Crabbe company and we found Hermione there. Mrs. Crabbe told me she's such a nice girl, nothing like what she'd have imagined a muggleborn to be like. She told us that the Ravenclaw girls have been coming by every day to read aloud to Chip, to make sure he knows he's not forgotten, and to help him find his way back if he's lost. I told her that Chip doesn't say much, but he's part of us, and it just doesn't feel right with him gone. She hugged me and then apologized for her presumption and I told her that I'm not here as Lord Black right now, I'm here as one of Chip's worried friends. We talked for a bit and I said I hoped things were going all right back home, and she told me that Molly Weasley had been checking by her house twice a day to make sure everything was all right.

**29 September Sunday **

We visited Chip for a bit and trained in DADA in the afternoon and there was a frost again this morning.

**30 September Monday**

CHIP'S AWAKE! He woke up this afternoon wanting to know what Bilbo was going to do next and where was Granger? We all went and brought Hermione at once and Mrs. Crabbe hugged her and we told her that the Houses of Black, Malfoy and Crabbe stood in her debt and she shouldn't hesitate to call on us at need. We're missing transfiguration, but PMM said we were excused.

Chip's pretty weak and he can't walk at all yet, so we're all taking turns coming to spend time with him and help him catch up on his classwork, and the Ravenclaw girls are still reading him The Hobbit. Madame Pomfrey says he can start trying to walk again tomorrow or the next day, and we need to be aware it will take quite a while before he's back to normal.

All of us Slytherins first years, plus the Ravenclaw girls and the Griffindor boys and Lydia Moon and the rest of the scouts and Susan and Hannah and Sally Anne all got together and we agreed that this has got to stop. We are all going to go everywhere in groups of at least three from now on, and we're all going to be watching for anyone doing anything suspicious - professors, upper years, anyone, and we're going to get together to pass on information after dinner every day and see if we can figure anything out.


	11. One through Three October, 1991

**1 October 1991 Tuesday**

It's another one of those odd holidays the house elves like so much, and it's Cedric's birthday, and we finally feel like we have something to celebrate. There were huge raisin challahs at all the tables at lunch, and they even made a smaller one for Chip and his mother and brought it to them in the hospital wing, along with the matzo ball soup and honey-pomegranate-glazed chicken and potato kugel and glazed carrots and honey cake.

I'm cutting library study hall to sit and write, just cos its been so long since I actually wrote anything down properly. Reading what I wrote over the last few weeks it sounds like the only people I talked to were Greg, Draco, and Theo, and that's not true at all. I'm still partners with Neville in potions and we still get together to work on prep skills and concentration and I still think of him as one of my best friends. I'm still in scouts, and I'm still partners with Hermione in Herbology, and after finding out what she did for Chip (cos it was all her idea), I like her even better than I did before. I still have astrology with Padma, Su, and Ernie, and we all still have dance class together. I haven't actually written anything about dance class since the 5th, when I danced with Sally Anne for the first time. Since then we've had, um, six classes, and I know I partnered Sally Anne once more, and I know I danced with Parvati Patil and very much prefer Padma. I missed classes on the 26th due to being with the centaurs, so I am only forgetting three people. Darn. Think think think. Oh, Su Li, Padma, and Lydia, who back-leads like nobody's business. And Percy and Cedric teach our DADA group, and Percy also brought me some chocolate and some really wicked color-changing ink from Hogsmeade. I promised him I would only use the ink for letter writing because the teachers wouldn't like to have to read homework in it, so I used it to write to Luna and Mrs. Figg.

The 16th was Luna's birthday, and it was also the day Draco and Chip had their accident, so I totally forgot to wish her a happy birthday, and I think it took me almost a week to remember. I know I wrote her a very long, very apologetic letter explaining all the awful things that had been happening. I got a letter back the very next day forgiving me and she said when she hadn't heard from me in so long, she knew something was wrong and she was glad to hear I was all right.

Let's see, what else? I've been reading Grandfather's journals. I got through everything he wrote directly to me and now I've started from the beginning, and by the beginning, I mean his first day at Hogwarts, back in 1912. He was in Slytherin too, no surprise there. Head of house was Professor Overcliff back then, who was older then than Dumbledore is now and apparently knew and had something on everybody. Grandfather had two younger brothers, Corey and Reg. I know they don't have families on the family tree, I wonder what happened to them?

Anyway, Grandfather also knew he was the heir, or rather the heir of the heir, and was working on meeting people and making alliances pretty much from day 1. He didn't have to worry about who he was going to marry, though, because he was already betrothed to Melania McMillan, who is two years behind him but who showed powerful accidental magic back when she was two.

One interesting thing I found out from my reading - families might informally intend certain betrothals, but they didn't get the contracts written up until both children displayed accidental magic. So people weren't actually betrothed from birth. Also, the Blacks didn't kill their squibs, they found them schooling and later employment outside the magical world. So Malfoy squibs get adopted by the Livingoods and work on the farm, and Black squibs go to Eton. It would be interesting to do some research on those branches of the family tree. I bet some of them lead right back to Hogwarts. I wonder if Hermione is actually a distant cousin? Although, considering the circles the Black squibs ran in, Justin Finch-Fletchley is probably a better bet.

One thing I'm finding really interesting, though, is back then it was only muggleborns and raiseds who took the Hogwarts Express. Everyone else flooed right to Hogsmeade Station, and they just timed it so everyone arrived at the same time, which was just after lunch. Then they spent the afternoon taking placement tests and then they had the banquet and got sorted. And a lot of classes like Potions and Charms had intro. classes first, so if you came in not knowing anything, or anything much, you started there. They also had special classes on Magical Culture for everyone who wasn't raised in it, in the slot we use for tutorials now. So what we think of as first year Potions used to be a mixture of first through third years, and the only way you got a NEWT in a magical subject is if you came in already knowing a bit. Well, unless you were a genius and got to take accelerated classes after your first year. They had a lot more teachers and kids back then, too. There were two dozen first year Slytherins in his class, and no less than eighteen first years in any house. Must have been a long sorting ceremony.

But, I wonder where everybody went? Did the Grindelwald and Voldemort Wars kill off _that_ many people? The school tracks alumni, I think I'll get Greg and the Ravenclaws looking into it. I bet they'll find it fascinating. And I wonder if the pureblood/halfblood/muggleborn ratio was the same?

I think tomorrow after class, or maybe even during class, I am going to ask Professor Binns what the first few days at Hogwarts were like when he was a student. He must have had to do placement tests and such. It would be interesting to see what we can find for enrollment records, too.

**2 October Wednesday**

Well, _that_ was interesting.

Most of the rest of the day yesterday went pretty normally. I danced with Morag in dance class, ran tutorials for Neville and others during tutorials hour (which was flying class for the first two weeks), went to art and art and astrology and then to dinner, where there was another huge challah, and brisket, and stuffed cabbage, and borscht, which is beet soup and I am never eating it again, and cucumber salad, and apple strudel for afters (except that Hufflepuff got a cake for Cedric's birthday) and while Draco and I were arguing over who got the last chunk of challah, Professor Quirrel ran in and shouted that there was a troll in the dungeons, thought we ought to know, and fainted. Then PD told the prefects to escort the students back to their dorms, and the Slytherin and Hufflepuff prefects stood up and said, excuse me, our common rooms are _in_ the dungeons, so PD said strike that, everyone stay right where they are, and Draco and Greg and I realized that Chip and his mother were in the hospital wing and probably didn't know about the troll. But Remus said, if we were thinking of running off to the hospital wing on our own, we could stop right there, and he rounded up the advanced group from DADA, cleared it with PMM, and sent them down in battle formation.

Everyone spent the night in the great hall, and we found out later that the group ran into the troll on the way to the hospital wing, which is _not_ in the dungeons, and had to fight it off and warn Mr. and Mrs. Goyle, and apparently Mr. Goyle is a major bad-ass and killed the thing dead. There's going to be an inquiry into how a troll got into the school, and Madame Bones and some wardsmiths from Gringotts are going to assess the school's wards, and all of the students have been sent home for a week while they do that. Theo is staying with Draco's family and I'm staying with Neville because my suite hasn't been set up yet at home. I'm not insulted by that, they weren't expecting me until just before Christmas after all, and there's a lot of house to settle into. I'm in the same rooms I used the last couple of times I've stayed here. Neville says we should just say these are my rooms and be done with it. Tango has thoroughly explored them, and he approves.

We explained to Lady Longbottom about Theo and she talked to Remus about him as well, and Theo and Draco will be coming over tomorrow along with Draco's old tutor, and we're all going to sit lessons together. I'm hoping to get in some serious work in potions, maybe get Neville up to snuff before we go back. And we also have permission to do some flying and explore the grounds. I asked Neville if his family had a village like Draco's does, and he looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was taking the mickey. What? Ottery-St.-Catchpole. Oh, erm, oops. I didn't realize Neville's house was anywhere near Ottery-St.-Catchpole, I've only ever apparated or flooed to either. Neville says it's only a few miles.

Neville's never ridden a bicycle, and he doesn't think Draco or Theo will have either. Remus says he will be perfectly happy to go to London and pick up four good sturdy boys' bicycles and teach us all how to ride them. He figures by the end of the week, we should be comfortable riding into the village and back no problem, and it will be a good thing to keep us all occupied with this summer, too. I asked him, could he get girls' bikes for Luna and Ginny as well, and he said sure, and one for Ron while he was at it. And make sure Draco's is green and silver and really posh? Of course. He'd even convince the Weasleys it wasn't charity while he was at it, and he went and did just that. Remus is the best. (I sent Hedwig over with a note to tell Luna we were back, and she's going to come join us for at least part of tomorrow.)

So then he spent the rest of the afternoon teaching me & Neville (mostly Neville) how to ride. Cushioning charms are a wonderful thing. By the time we were called in for dinner, I was pretty comfortable riding around the manor pathways, and Neville was getting pretty close, and that means when Draco and Theo come tomorrow, Neville won't be way behind in something for once.

Dinner was good. No duck. We had mock turtle soup, and filet of sole, and spinach salad with almonds and cranberries, and then a brilliant chocolate cake in honor of the young master being home. Then Neville and I just hung out and talked and I gave Tango a good brushing and we discussed what an awesome cat he is, and now it's bedtime.

**3 October Thursday**

Coming south from Scotland, it's like we've jumped backward a month. No frosts here. It's a beautiful warm day, so we had some of our lessons outdoors. Draco's tutor, Mr. Laughalot, sent us on a scavenger hunt and gave us lists of different plants and stones and bugs and things to find, and gave us until lunch to do it. It was a lot of fun and Neville won. We weren't that surprised because it's his house and he's brilliant with plants. Theo came in second, then me and Draco. Mr. Laughalot gave Neville and Theo tickets to the next Puddlemere U Quidditch match, which is going to be against Pride of Portree tomorrow night, as prizes, but after a bit we agreed to a switch and Draco and I get the tickets and Draco is going to take Theo and I'm going to take Neville out book shopping instead, and I might take Neville to a couple of nurseries while we're out.

We had a picnic lunch with cucumber and tomato sandwiches and ginger biscuits, and Luna bicycled over (!) to join us and brought a jug of watermelon juice, which was surprisingly good. After lunch we practiced bike riding. Draco picked it up almost as fast as I did and we all had a grand time racing around. We all thanked Remus for having put cushioning charms on them, too, as we fell down rather a lot, and it was nice not to get all banged up while we were doing it. Luna pointed out that there is a bicycle repair shop in the village that's been there forever and Draco wondered if there's one is Oxneycaster as well. Tomorrow morning Luna is going to come join us again and we are all going to work on potions, then we can ride into the village for lunch, drop by to say hello to Cedric and the Weasleys and be back in time to get ready to head out for shopping and Quiddich and dinner in town.

I like Mr. Laughalot. He played professional Quiddich in Australia for a while after graduating from Hogwarts and only came back to England five years ago, so he's still got a bit of an accent and he has great stories of the magical community in Australia and the Outback and how the Statute of Secrecy doesn't really extend out there because the aborigines never signed on to it and don't want to, or even see the point of it. He says it's one of the few truly wild places left, and magic is always closer to the surface in wild places. He said next week he'd tell us what little he knows about The Dreaming, which is a particularly Australian form of magic, but it really is only a little because white fulla don't belong to the land yet, so they don't dream too well. He has brown hair and a kind of foxlike face and he really does laugh a lot, and has smile lines around his eyes, and he's never really still, some part of him is always moving.

And then everyone went home for dinner and Neville and I rode around the grounds a bit more until it was our dinnertime and then went out and rode a bit more after. I can't wait for tomorrow!


	12. Nine through Twelve October, 1991

**9 October 1991 Wednesday**

I've sat down to write in here almost every night for the last week, but all I've produced are doodles and bindrunes. A bindrune for Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is an unholy mess. Ansuz, Peorth, Wynn, Beorc, Daeg. Ugh. Neville Longbottom is much simpler - Nyd, Lagu, a straight line with a diagonal crossbar in the middle and a diagonal hook at the top. Easy to carve, if not very auspicious. But then, Hagall Peorth isn't really much better so far as aspects go. Daeg Mannaz for Draco Malfoy looks pretty cool, and Raidho Wynn for Ron Weasley ends up looking like plain Raidho. I wonder if that means that Ron's Ron-ness overcomes his Weasley-ness? And Luna Lovegood is just Laguz and Greg Goyle is just Gyfu - which rather suits him, now that I think of it. I wonder, is Luna as watery as Greg is generous? And does that mean Ron has far to go? Wynn is bliss, and Raidho is journeys. Hmm. Could also mean that Ron is the source of his own problems. Percy is Peorth Wynn, Luck and Bliss. Fred and George are wealth and generosity.

I should do Ron's horoscope. Maybe it will be more auspicious than his bindrune.

Anyway, this is kind of proving my point here. I keep sitting down to write about my day, and I keep not writing. I don't understand why I can't write about it, I'm having the most fun I've ever had in my life. The bike ride into the village and then over to the Weasleys was fun, and watching Draco and Ron trying to outdo each other in daring stunts with their bikes was a riot. (Watching Remus practically have kittens over them was even better.) Remus also told us about something called a slow race, where the point was to be the last across the finish line, but the catch was your feet couldn't touch the ground or you were out, and Remus finite-ed our bikes before we started so we wouldn't have balance or cushioning charms to help us. It was really funny and nobody won, and the twins laughed at us, so we had them have a go, and they couldn't do it either. I think Luna would have won easily, though, if she tried. It really looked like she put her foot down on purpose.

And shopping with Neville was great. I took him to Daunt Books first, and he loved it and had a wonderful time looking at everything, and then I took him to Waterstone's and I think his head exploded. We ended up just going to the gardening and horticulture section as we couldn't take in all 13 km of bookshelves and still make the Quiddich game. Draco and Theo didn't believe us about the place, so we ended up making another trip back on Saturday so they could see it too. I don't think Draco knew muggles had this many books. I think he ended up spending his entire quarter's allowance and bought so many books we had to have them shipped, since we couldn't exactly shrink them right there in the store.

One thing that was fun was showing them the children's books section. The magical world doesn't have pop-up or lift-the-flap books, and they've never heard of Doctor Seuss (or Dr. Who either, but I wasn't going to try to explain all that right then). Theo got sad for a while because his father is a scholar and he wished he could show him the bookshop, so we went for hot chocolate and croissants and just sat for a while.

It was interesting visiting Waterstone's and seeing it through the eyes of the sons of two pureblood supremacists. Draco tried hard to act unimpressed until he finally gave up. Theo just walked around quietly with huge eyes. Neither of them could believe what they were seeing. Muggle things aren't supposed to be awesome. Draco especially looked like he was expecting to find some third world country once he left magical London. Next I have to take them to Heathrow. Heh.

I think the reason I am having trouble focusing is that now that things have slowed down a bit, I've got time to think again. It's all so huge and unreal. I'm the Earl of Black. I'm insanely rich. I'm a wizard. I'm famous for having killed Sauron/Gargamel/Megatron/Davros before I was old enough to cross the street by myself. People are expecting me to save them. People are trying to kill me.

Before, my life sucked, but it was my life, and I even had some little bit of control of it and plans for what I was going to do with it. Go to Stonewall, make a few friends, get decent but not spectacular marks, join the army as soon as I turned sixteen, leave Little Whinging, learn a trade, have a life. A person would have to be insane to prefer being and Army cook to being an Earl, but ...

No. I _have_ done things. I _have_ made decisions and changes. If I hadn't brought a football with me and talked to other people about it, we wouldn't have our evening inter-house football games. If I hadn't introduced Hermione to Padma, she might have gone into Gryffindor. If I weren't helping Neville, he would still be blowing up cauldrons. If I hadn't talked to Greg, he'd still be Draco's resentful henchman. If I hadn't written to Grandfather, he might never have found me before he died. Binding so many Deatheaters to me was his choice, but if I hadn't contacted him, he wouldn't have been able to make it. So a quacky duck pull-toy in Hogwarts robes _wouldn't_ be able to step into my new life with no discernible difference.

Just, my choices have so much more weight now. Before if I messed up, the only one who got hurt was me. I don't want to be Jesus. But then, neither did He.

Bah. Enough wallowing. I'm turning into a Goth. Next I should start wearing black and listening to the Sisters of Mercy.

How can it help you when you don't know what you need?

How can anybody set you free?

Would he walk upon the water if he couldn't walk away?

And would you carry the torch for me?

**10 October Thursday**

And were it not so black,

And not so hard to see,

What use to you would be any fire?

Yeah, still dark music in my head. I know Neville, Hannah and Susan at least would like me even if I weren't the vastly wealthy and influential Earl of Black. I am _not_ nostalgic for my cupboard.

And the wind blows still

And the wind blows wild again

I know what I need. I need to go visit Chip and see how he's doing and if there's anything I can do to help. And I can bring Kinder eggs for everyone. That'll cheer everyone up, and I bet Chip and Greg have never had Kinder eggs. Tomorrow I'll ask Draco how many siblings Chip has, so I don't leave anyone out.

I should also ask Remus if he knows how Sirius Black is doing and if he would like to hear from me. Maybe he'll be well enough for a visit over Christmas hols.

**11 October Friday**

We're going back to Hogwarts on Sunday, cos the wards are all checked out and upgraded. They've added an anti-animagus ward that you have to be keyed into to get onto the grounds and an anti-Dark Mark ward as well. The latter is going to be a huge pain as Professor Snape is going to be the only Dark Mark wearer keyed into the wards. Lord Nott, Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Crabbe, Mr. Goyle, Mr. MacNair, and others will be brought in on afternoon passes only. I would have thought Mr. Malfoy would have prevented that, since he's on the board and all, but he _suggested_ it. He says all evidence points to the person who attacked Draco being an ex-Deatheater, and keeping all Deatheaters out of Hogwarts unless they are escorted by faculty members might not keep the dissension in the ranks out, but it's a good start, and it's much better for a few parents to be inconvenienced than for more children to be hurt.

I'm going to visit Chip and Greg tomorrow. Chip has an older sister and a younger sister. The older sister doesn't go to Hogwarts and the younger isn't expected to either. It's ridiculous. There are so few students now compared to how many went when Grandfather was in school, and we have so many unused classrooms. I wonder, there must be unused dorms? I don't recall ever having seen any, but all those students have to have slept somewhere. Or did some students attend as day students? I really have got to look into that.

It's been a great week and a half, all in all. We've all been out and about on our bikes, me, Neville, Draco, and Theo riding into the village and Ron, Luna and Ginny riding up to the manor. Ginny has actually progressed beyond squeaking, although mostly when she thinks I'm not looking. She and Theo have really hit it off, which is great for both of them. Remus and Mr. Laughalot and Mrs. Weasley have been tag team teaching the lot of us together, so we've learned lots of different stuff. We had a go at inventing bicycle Quidditch, but decided it involved way too much falling down (again hoorah for cushioning charms!) and Remus and Mr. Laughalot taught us how to play basketball instead. One quaffle, two hoops, no bludgers, no snitch, although this quaffle bounces instead of flying. Draco and Theo have actually stopped being so awfully pale (although saying they'd got tans would be vastly overstating the case), which suits them immensely, and Neville has gotten a lot less shy. And we all spent a fair amount of time on potions basics, which did both Neville and Ron some good.

I think I need to pay more attention to Ron. Something's up with him, I need to figure it out. He hates reading, studying, anything to do with school, but he's not stupid. He's got this major reverse snobbery thing going on about ettiquette and pureblood customs and the like, but he obviously knows them all just as deep-down and instinctive as Draco, Theo, and Neville. I can see being sensitive about being poor, especially with Draco and me being rolling in it and Neville and Theo and Luna being quite comfortable, but at the same time, it's that pureblood privilege he hates that has all of his family at Hogwarts. The Crabbes and Goyles certainly don't all get to go. 'Course, I don't think he realizes that all of the Sacred Twenty-eight attend Hogwarts unless they decide otherwise. The house of Weasley is rather an odd one all in all. I want to sit down with Percy and talk with him about it at some point.

Anyway, so, what did we do today? It was Friday, and we didn't have dance last week, so we decided we would this week. We already had me, Draco, Neville, Theo, and Ron for boys, and Luna and Ginny for girls, so we invited Ernie, Greg and Blaise to round out the boys, and Susan, Hannah, Pansy, Millie, Morag and Hermione for girls. Hermione had never visited a magical household before, and her parents rescheduled all their appointments so they could come too. It was interesting watching the adults together - well, as much as I could watch, since we were kind of busy.

One of the dances was another blind choice dance. Funny how Draco and Pansy always end up together on those. I ended up with Millie, and I stuck a flower behind my ear and let her lead. We got a group picture taken and we sent one copy to Shack with a "Wish you were here!" note and I waved my fan at him and said in the note that I missed my best partner ever. I think girls are going to be fighting over him next year.

After, we all got together and listened to records. Draco still likes jazz and he quite liked Enigma as well. Most of the girls like Spandau Ballet (one of the records Hermione brought, from her mother's collection), most of the boys thought they were a bit sappy. I wouldn't mind having a voice like that when I grow up, though. Neville played some Celestina Warbeck so that the ones of us who had escaped her so far would have had the experience. Hermione said she could see her appealing to certain types of people. Millie's added, "... who aren't us." I played my Sol Invictus album (it was in the bargain bin and I was curious) and Theo really liked it. Hermione asked me if I knew Wakeford had been in the National Front, which I hadn't, so then we got talking about what that was, and politics in general. The purebloods were all shocked to find out that muggles had something like a pureblood supremacy movement, and thought the idea of basing it on skin tone was just surreal. (Length of time your family has been living in Britain made sense to everyone, though.) Hermione agreed with me that we were shocked to find out that there was something like the National Front in the magical world.

After that we spent a bit of time working out which of us wouldn't be wanted by whom. The National Front would want to be rid of Blaise and Prefect Jones and the Patils, but they'd love the Weasleys and Hermione. Deatheaters would be fine with the first group, but consider the Weasleys blood traitors and Hermione shouldn't even exist, and I'm only OK because I'm the Earl. We decided it does all seem kind of arbitrary, especially when you consider that fifty years ago the Patils weren't considered really pureblooded but I would have been.

When we were all done, I lent Theo my Sol Invictus album and promised him I'd look around for more of them. So I know what to get Theo for his birthday. Maybe I should snag a copy of Ezra Pound's _Cantos_ while I'm at it. "Gold Is King" might make more sense that way, and the fact that it's Pound reading his own work there at the start of the song makes it even more brilliant.

**12 October Saturday**

That helped a lot. Chip is doing a lot better, and he and his sisters really liked the Kinder eggs (I'll give Greg his later.) He can walk again although he gets tired a lot faster than he used to. Mr. Crabbe offered to take me on a tour of the tannery, but Mrs. Crabbe said maybe I'd like to see the village instead, so I walked with three generations of Vincent Crabbes down to the village pub and around the village a bit. I met Mr. and Mrs. Jugson who run the pub, Mr. Rowle who runs the village store, Mrs. Rowle the postmistress, and great-grandfather Crabbe, who is retired and hangs around at the pub all day swapping stories with Gaffer Livingood, Gammer Wrede, and Gaffer Bole - and anyone else who happens to come in. The Boles run an orchard and brew mead, cider, and perry, and Mr. Rowle poured me shots of some of the local brews so I could see what they were like. My favorite had orange peel, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon in it, which makes it technically a metheglin, and I told them I could definitely see why the village is famous for its mead.

The combined gaffers and one gammer tell great stories. I really can't imagine dignified Mr. Malfoy swimming naked in the millpond, even if he was my age at the time. Apparently he snuck out at night and met up with Mr. Crabbe, Mr. Goyle, and Mr. Flint, who was the miller's son and is now the miller, and when they were caught, they all got their backsides warmed for it.

So we hung out for a while there, then we visited the village shop, which is also the post office, public floo, and owlery. I bought a bag of mixed boiled sweets and a bottle of metheglin to bring to Lady Longbottom as a hostess gift and then we headed back to the Crabbe's house, which is a great rambling thing and fuller than the Weasleys' house, if not quite so lively. Four generations of Vincent Crabbes, three generation of Mrs. Crabbes, Chip and his sisters, plus his Aunt Rosemary, who is only 20 and not married yet, his great uncle Brock, who isn't quite right and helps out on one of the local farms, and his cousin Sam, who got thrown out by his own parents for reasons that the adults refuse to explain.

Mrs. Crabbe isn't as good a cook as Mrs. Weasley, but she's still quite good, and as I lie here writing this, I am still stuffed! If I ate like that all the time, I don't think my broom would be able to carry me. Mrs. Crabbe is even better than Mrs. Weasley at the whole "Here, eat more, you look like you're wasting away" thing. But then, the Weasleys are tall and skinny. The Crabbes are _huge_. Gaffer Crabbe can lift me with one arm and carry me on his shoulder as if I were a down pillow.

The three Mr. Crabbes who aren't retired are tanners, but their house is still a farmhouse, and they have chickens and geese and two goats named Heidi and Mitzi who are really friendly. The seniormost Mrs. Crabbe is still the mistress of the garden, and it's an amazing garden, with a bit of everything you can imagine growing in a wild, colorful, but still productive jumble. I have got to get permission to bring Neville there. The gardens at Longbottom Hall are all very formal, I bet he'd love this.

I think, for myself, I could rent a room in Oxneycaster and live quite happily.

But tomorrow is back to school, so I really should get some sleep.


End file.
